Solar-Assisted Liquid Desiccant Dehumidification Using Hollow-Fiber and Parallel-Plate Membrane Dehumidifiers: Comparative Analysis

In hot and humid climates, air conditioning is an energy-intensive process due to the latent heat load. A unitary air conditioner system is proposed, here, to reduce the latent heat of the humid air using a liquid desiccant followed by an evaporative cooling system. The heat liberated by the desiccant is removed by a solution to the solution heat exchanger. To restore the concentration of the liquid desiccant, the desiccant solution is regenerated by any low-temperature heat source such as solar energy. In order to make the system compact, the membrane heat exchanger is used for the dehumidifier and regenerator. This paper presents the numerical investigation of heat and mass transfer characteristics of a selected membrane dehumidifier under different climatic parameters. Membrane-based parallel-plate and hollow-fiber exchangers are used for this application. A parallel-plate heat-and-mass exchanger (contactor) is composed of a series of plate-type membrane sheets to form channels. On the other hand, hollow-fiber membranes are packed in a shell to form a shell-and-tube heat-and-mass exchanger. The two streams of both contactors are in a counter parallel flow, separated by micro-porous semi-permeable hydrophobic membranes. In this research, the equations governing the transport of heat and mass between the two streams along with the membrane effect in both contactors are solved numerically. The results are compared at different number-of-transfer units (NTU) on the airside and thermal capacity ratios. It is found that the hollow fiber is more efficient than the parallel plate.