The uses of silica gel for dehumidification of radiant cooling system

The aim of this study was to investigate and design a solid desiccant dehumidification and radiant cooling system suitable for tropical climates to achieve thermal comfort. The influence of an interior ventilation fan on thermal comfort assessment was also examined. The designed simulation system used TRNSYS and ANSYS software to compare with the measured data. The total area of the ceiling and wall radiant cooling panels was 16.83m² and 16.32m² with 26.28 litre/min of supplied water by the cooling tower for radiant cooling system. The solid desiccant dehumidifiers were hollow cylindrical packed bed dehumidifiers containing 10kg of silica gel (3mm diameter). The flow rate of supply air was approximately 90kg/h. The TRNSYS simulation results indicated that the values of predicted mean voted (PMV) could be improving from 1.46 to 1.21 with the use of cooling panel comparison with the case of no cooling panel throughout the year. The authors have shown that the feasible and practical of predicted mean vote in case of no cooling panel (E1), cooling panel (E2), and cooling panel with dehumidifier (E3) were 1.48, 0.89 and 0.62, respectively. The lower temperature and humidity ratio could improve thermal comfort. The patterns of temperature, the relative humidity and the predicted mean volte from ANSYS simulation in case of S1 are in agreement with the experimental results. In the case of the ventilation fan installed in the radiant cooling system (S2), the average value of predicted mean vote was -0.24. Consequently, the predicted percentage dissatisfied was reduced to 6.24%.