Study on the heat transfer characteristics of CO2 and liquid desiccant CaCl2 aqueous solution in the gas cooler and evaporator

The heat exchangers are essential components in the CO2 heat pump-driven liquid desiccant dehumidification system since the heat transfer performance of heat exchangers directly affects the energy efficiency of the system. However, the heat transfer characteristics of CO2 and liquid desiccant in the heat exchanger have yet to be fully revealed, resulting in a lack of appropriate strategies to improve the heat transfer performance. To address this issue, numerical gas cooler and evaporator models are developed and verified. The effects of parameters such as the weight concentration of the CaCl2 aqueous solution, the CO2 inlet pressure, mass flow rates, and the length of the heat exchanger on the heat transfer performance are investigated respectively under various operating conditions. Results show that the heat exchange load of the gas cooler can be significantly impacted by various inlet parameters of both fluids. In particular, the increase in the weight concentration from 36 to 54 wt.% deteriorates the heat exchange load by over 15 %. Nevertheless, the heat exchange load of the evaporator is hardly influenced by the weight concentration. This is attributed to a great gap in the two fluids' heat capacity rates, causing the evaporator to be in the maximum heat transfer state. The sign of the maximum heat transfer state of the heat exchanger is whether the thermal effectiveness is close to 1, which is related to the heat transfer area. Therefore, modifying the heat exchanger length could avoid the thermal effectiveness approaching 1. Results indicate that the appropriate length of the evaporator is 3-4 m under the designed operating conditions.