2005 Volume 22 Issue 3 Pages 269-278
A field-test of solar assisted desiccant evaporative cooling process has been carried out, which is a quite attractive cooling / dehumidification process considering various environmental problems caused by conventional electricity driven air conditioners. The process performance has been examined by means of temperature drop between outside air and supply air and COPs (COP value based on solar irradiation). This cooling performance was strongly influenced by solar irradiation and ambient air condition. Stable irradiation produced a higher regeneration temperature resulting higher dehumidifying performance. At one day with as table solar irradiation, the cooling process could produce cool supply air of 18.7°C against the ambient air of 30.1°C and averaged COP, was 0.41. On the other hand, unstable irradiation due to some clouds made the dehumidifying performance lower. However, decrease in the cooling performance was small compared to that obtained at the stable irradiation condition. This is due to buffering by thermal storage of the water circulating in solar collectors. Influence of ambient humidity on the cooling performance was rather serious. At higher humidity condition, the amount of dehumidified water became larger due to increase of effective adsorption capacity of the desiccant rotor. However, the temperature drop was decreased to 6.9°C. This behavior was mainly due to simultaneous increase of humidity and temperature in the dehumidified air. In this situation, an effective evaporation in the following water spray evaporative cooler did not occur.
