Analysis of a field-installed hybrid solar desiccant cooling system

Conference · Tue Aug 01 04:00:00 EDT 1995

OSTI ID:87438

West, M K ^[1]; Iyer, S V ^[2]

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1. Florida Energy Extension Service, Gainesville, FL (United States)
2. Univ. of Florida, Gainesville, FL (United States)

Many hotels, restaurants, and supermarkets report problems with high humidity. Also, heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) humidity issues were found to be major contributors to energy inefficiency in these applications. Desiccant cooling systems, thermally regenerated with solar heat, waste heat, natural gas, or other thermal sources, are becoming a viable air-conditioning option to control humidity. The objective of this work is to monitor and assess the performance of a commercial hybrid solar solid desiccant air-conditioning system in a high-humidity restaurant application. Air is heated in the regeneration section by a heat recirculator coil, a condenser waste heat recovery coil, and a solar coil, accounting for roughly 27%, 24%, and 49% of the regeneration heat, respectively, when solar energy is available. The specific humidity change across the desiccant wheel varies from 4 to 90 gr/lb (0.57 to 12.86 g/kg) over the 108 F to 197 F (42.2 C to 91.7 C) regeneration temperature range. The coefficient of performance (COP), defined as the usable cooling capacity divided by the heat input, increased from 0.2 to 1.0 at the rate of 0.01 for every 10 F rise in the regeneration temperature. The results from this project provide much valued field data as well as a design future work.

• OSTI ID: 87438
• Report Number(s): CONF-950104--
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

14 SOLAR ENERGY
32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
DESICCANTS
PERFORMANCE
RESTAURANTS
SOLAR AIR CONDITIONERS
VENTILATION SYSTEMS