PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF AN OPEN-CYCLE LIQUID DESICCANT COOLING SYSTEM USING SOLAR-ENERGY FOR REGENERATION

An open-cycle solar space-cooling system, which operates on the ventilation mode using a liquid desiccant, has been proposed for places like Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, where the temperature and humidity are high during the summer months. The ambient air is dehumidified using a liquid desiccant followed by adiabatic evaporative cooling, and the weak desiccant is regenerated by solar energy. For this cooling system, an expression is derived in this paper to predict the amount of heat removed from the space to be conditioned in terms of known initial parameters. The effects of ambient air conditions, insolation, cooling water temperature, and the desiccant concentration in the dehumidifier are also discussed.