Adsorption/Desorption Behavior Of Water Vapor In An Adsorbent Desiccant Rotor

Abstract

Desiccant cooling system can be driven with a low temperature heat such as around 80°C obtained from exhaust gas and so on. Among the configuration of the cooling cycle, honeycomb rotary adsorber is the most important part to achieve higher cooling performance. By means of computer simulation, angular and axial distributions of the amount of adsorbed water, air humidity, air temperature and adsorbent temperature inside the desiccant rotor at various operating conditions were investigated. In the mathematical model, lumped mass transfer coefficient was used and its value were derived from the fitting with experimental results to improve the reliability of discussion about the simultaneous heat/mass transfer in the desiccant rotor. It was found that the part of honeycomb rotary adsorber which is close to the regeneration air inlet cannot work well as an adsorbent at higher regeneration temperature regardless of outside air condition and regeneration air humidity. On the other hand, since the driving force was extremely low throughout all the axial positions, water vapor was adsorbed gradually at the whole axial position of rotor under a lower regeneration temperature. Consequently, this study could clarify the importance of the optimization of the rotor in terms of its length depending on the operating and air conditions.