A novel desiccant chiller with regenerative evaporative cooling component is proposed in this paper. The unit is configured by desiccant wheel, cross flow heat exchanger, regenerative evaporative cooler, water pump and fan, etc.. The unique feature for this system is that it can not only handle the latent heat efficiently in principle of desiccant dehumidification, but also can produce the chilled water as low as 15 °C using the regenerative evaporative cooler. Thus, the novel unit can condition the process air to a reasonable temperature and humidity level just by open cycle desiccant cooling, and only consume a small amount of electricity for pump and fan. The regenerative evaporative cooling here can have strong cooling capacity because it uses part of dry air from the desiccant wheel. Compared with the traditional desiccant cooling system, the novel unit can cool the process air to a lower temperature level without increasing the humidity like the direct evaporative cooler. Due to the use of the composite desiccant materials and the specialty developed coating measure, the desiccant wheel can be driven by low grade thermal energy (50-90 °C, and the thermal COP of the system can reach as high as 1.0. Thus the solar thermal and waste heat can be used efficiently. The objective of this paper is to investigate the performance of this novel unit and identify the optimal operation parameters for practical application.
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