Liquid desiccant dehumidification system

Liquid desiccant dehumidification system is one of the emerging technology which can be used as a promising alternative to achieve humidity control and improve indoor air quality. It is also have the ability to reduce the airborne pollutants. The major advantage of these system lies on capability to handle the latent load without super-cooling and then reheating the air, as happens in the traditional vapour compression air conditioning system. In this work, a complete thermodynamic analysis of the solar driven liquid desiccant dehumidification system is presented. A mathematical model is developed using COMSOL Multiphysics software to predict the performance of the combined adiabatic dehumidifier and solar regenerator. Lithium chloride is chosen as a desiccant. The numerical results are compared with the experimental data reported in the literature and a good match is found between them. The performance of the adiabatic dehumidifier and solar regenerator are evaluated by the ambient relative humidity and dry bulb temperature, and desiccant solution concentration, temperature and flow rate. The results show that process air dry bulb temperature, desiccant solution concentration, and ratio of air to desiccant flow rate have the greater impact on the performance of the system.  This mathematical model can be used for predicting the performance of the combined adiabatic dehumidifier and solar regenerator employing any liquid desiccant solution.