Energy Performance Evaluation of a Desiccant Air Handling System to Maximize Solar Thermal Energy Use in a Hot and Humid Climate

Makiko Ukai, Masaya Okumiya and Hideki Tanaka
Additional contact information
Makiko Ukai: Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan
Masaya Okumiya: Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan
Hideki Tanaka: Campus Planning & Environment Management Office, Nagoya University, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 5, 1-18

Abstract: A desiccant air handling unit is one of the major types of dehumidification handling systems and requires hot water or hot air to regenerate sorption materials. If solar thermal energy is used as the heat source for regeneration, in general, a backup electrical heater, backup boiler, or combined heat and power (CHP) is installed in order to maintain a stable hot water supply. In this study, effective control is proposed for a desiccant air handling system that uses solar thermal energy (flexible control), and its energy performance is compared to that of a traditional control (the fixed control) through a system simulation. The diurnal behavior shows that the system with a fixed control without a backup boiler cannot process the latent load properly (28 GJ of unprocessed latent load for July and August). On the other hand, the system with a flexible control without a backup boiler is able to process required latent heat load. Based on the fact that the fixed control needs a backup boiler to process the latent load, the system with a fixed control with a backup boiler is considered for the energy performance comparison. The simulation results show that the primary energy-based coefficient of performance (hereafter, COP) of the system with a flexible control without a backup boiler reaches 1.56. On the other hand, the primary energy-based COP of the system with a fixed control with a backup boiler reaches only 1.43. This proves that the flexible control contributes to the higher energy performance of the system and maximizes the use of solar thermal energy more than the fixed control.

Keywords: desiccant air handling unit; performance evaluation; flexible control (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1921/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/5/1921/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:12:y:2020:i:5:p:1921-:d:327911

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().