Abstract
This paper shows an influence of evaporative cooler at the inlet of regeneration air stream of an adsorptive desiccant cooling process on the cooling/dehumidifying performance. This evaporative cooling was expected to cause humidity increase in regeneration air reducing the dehumidifying performance of the honeycomb absorber, while the evaporative cooling plays an important role to produce a lower temperature in supply air. Two different airs to be used for the regeneration of the desiccant wheel were considered. One was fresh outside air (OA mode) and the other was air ventilated from the room (RA mode). Experimental results showed that the amount of dehumidified water obtained at the process without water spray evaporative cooler was actually larger than that of process with water spray evaporative cooler. This behavior was mainly due to increase of humidity or relative humidity in the regeneration air as expected. However, temperature of supply air produced by the process with the evaporator was rather lower than that of the other because of the cooled return air, resulting higher CE value. Regarding the operating mode, the evaporative cooler at the OA-mode was no longer useful at higher ambient humidity because of the difficulty of the evaporation of the water in such high humidity. It was also found that its dehumidifying performance was remarkably decreased at higher ambient humidity and lower regeneration temperature since the effective adsorption capacity at the resulting high relative humidity of the regeneration air decreased.
