Use of liquid desiccant cooling to improve the performance of vapor compression air conditioning

A hybrid air conditioning system, which consists of sections of desiccant d ehumidification, evaporative cooling and vapor compression air conditioning , has been established in this paper. Experimental investigation demonstrat es that cooling production and COP of the new hybrid system can be increase d significantly, if they are compared with those of vapor compression syste m (VCS) alone. Assuming that the outlet temperature and humidity of the sys tem are constant, psychrometric analysis at ARI conditions has been conduct ed under three different cases. The benefits are represented by lower elect ricity consumption of the compressor, higher COP of the system, less flow r ate of condensation air, and reduced size of VCS, etc. The reason that the hybrid system is superior in performance to conventional systems lies in th at desiccant dehumidification and evaporative cooling changes the inlet sta tes of the air entering into VCS. Furthermore, the effects of dehumidificat ion and evaporative cooling are analyzed in the paper. (C) 2001 Elsevier Sc ience Ltd. All rights reserved.