Indoor Air Quality Enhancement Performance of Liquid Desiccant and Evaporative Cooling-Assisted Air Conditioning Systems

Beom-Jun Kim, Junseok Park and Jae-Weon Jeong
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Beom-Jun Kim: Department of Architectural Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea
Junseok Park: Department of Architectural Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea
Jae-Weon Jeong: Department of Architectural Engineering, Hanyang University, Seoul 04763, Korea

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: The main objective of this study is to investigate the indoor air quality enhancement performance of two different liquid desiccant and evaporative cooling-assisted air conditioning systems, such as the variable air volume (VAV) system with the desiccant-enhanced evaporative (DEVap) cooler, and the liquid desiccant system with an indirect and direct evaporative cooling-assisted 100% outdoor air system (LD-IDECOAS), compared with the conventional VAV system. The transient simulations of concentration variations of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), coarse particles, and fine particles (PM 10 and PM 2.5 ) in a model office space served by each system were performed using validated system models that were found in the literature. Based on the hourly thermal loads of the model space predicted by the TRNSYS 18 program, each air conditioning system was operated virtually using a commercial equation solver program (EES). The results indicated that the LD-IDECOAS provided the lowest annual indoor CO 2 concentration among all the systems considered in this research, while the VAV system with DEVap cooler exceeded the threshold concentration (i.e., 1000 ppm) during the cooling season (i.e., July, August, and September). For the indoor particulate contaminant concentrations, both liquid desiccant and evaporative cooling-assisted air conditioning systems indicated lower indoor PM 2.5 and PM 10 concentrations compared with the reference system. The LD-IDECOAS and the VAV with a DEVap cooler demonstrated 33.3% and 23.5% lower annual accumulated indoor PM 10 concentrations than the reference system, respectively. Similarly, the annual accumulated indoor PM 2.5 concentration was reduced by 16% using the LD-IDECOAS and 17.1% using the VAV with DEVap cooler.

Keywords: indoor air quality; liquid desiccant dehumidification; desiccant-enhanced evaporative air cooling; carbon dioxide concentration; particulate contaminants (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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