Research Article
Sasapu Venkatesh*, Rohit Ba
Abstract
Increasing of occupant comfort demands are leading to rising requirement for air conditioning, but deteriorating global energy and environment crisis are starving for energy saving and environmental protection. The need to come up with the new energy saving as well as environmental friendly air conditioning systems has been more urgent than ever before. In hot and humid areas, the liquid desiccant air-conditioning systems based on evaporative cooling was proposed as an alternative to the traditional vapor compression systems due to its advantage in, removing the air latent load, friendly to environment, removing of pollutants from the process air and reduction of the electrical energy. In this project, recent researches and development activities in liquid desiccant dehumidification systems combined with evaporative cooling technologies are surveyed. Following that, such a liquid dehumidifier is fabricated. In this system, CaCl2 salt solution is used for dehumidification of air. Strong solution is internally cooled to minimize heating up of the solution which causes reduction in its absorbing capacity. Evaporative cooling that follows is more effective because dehumidified air flows over cooling water spray. Weak solution is regenerated by an electric heater. Finally air gets cooled and dehumidified. Heating for regeneration can be done using any cheap heat source like waste heat, solar energy. Direct evaporative cooling gives good effect in dry areas. Its effectiveness is not much in humid areas. To be suitable for such high humidity conditions in this system air is dried first, using cacl2 salt solution. Heat is generated during dehumidification. Cooling water is circulated to absorb this heat. Evaporative cooler also cools the salt solution after it got regenerated by heating.