Energy Performance Comparison Between a Heat Pump-driven Liquid Desiccant System and Conventional Liquid Desiccant System

Abstract

Vibrant researches on heat pump driven liquid desiccant (HPLD) system, which utilizes heating capacity and cooling capacity from condenser and evaporator respectively, have been conducted rapidly in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to assess the energy saving potential of a HPLD system compared with a conventional liquid desiccant (LD) system. Aqueous solution of LiCl was used in the LD system and R134a was used for the refrigerant in the heat pump. A simulation based on an empirical model of absorber was conducted, and total energy consumption in the proposed HPLD system were compared and analyzed with that of the conventional LD system. As a result, the proposed system showed better performance than the conventional liquid desiccant system in terms of energy saving. Moreover, HPLD is expeced to have a great advantage in the aspect of compactness from the replacement of the cooling and heating devices in the conventional LD system with a heat pump.