Performance Analysis of the Packed-type Liquid Desiccant Dehumidifier using Different Packing Materials

Energy consumption of air conditioning systems accounts for a large proportion of the total energy consumption in buildings. In the humid and hot areas, air dehumidification is a big concern for the air conditioning systems. As liquid desiccant dehumidification has prominent superiority in humidity control and energy saving over conventional dehumidification by mechanical cooling, it has been widely studied in recent years. The most commonly studied dehumidifiers are the packed-type dehumidifiers with structured packing. The packing materials have significant influence on the dehumidification performance of the dehumidifier. A better packing material could increase the dehumidification effectiveness and reduce the size of the dehumidifier. However, there is still lack of research on it, especially for the packing with high specific surface area which can be better used in real applications. This paper experimentally studied the influence of different packing materials with similar high specific surface area on the dehumidification performance of the dehumidifier. Three packing materials (fibre, plastic, metal) were tested. The performance of the three packings was studied by parameter analysis and compared from different perspectives. The empirical correlations of the moisture effectiveness of the dehumidifier were also developed for the three packings. The results show that for the packing materials, the dehumidification performance of fibre paper is the best, the second is the plastic and the metal material is worst. The deviations between the predicted results by using the developed empirical correlations and the experimental results are within 10%. The results of this study can be used for the selection, performance calculation and design of the dehumidifier.