Contributions of system components and operating conditions to the performance of desiccant cooling systems

This study systematically analyzes the effect of various kinds of design parameters on the performance of a desiccant cooling system under two different system configurations. The considered parameters include system components such as the sensible heat exchanger, regenerative evaporative cooler and desiccant wheel, as well as operating conditions of outdoor conditions, regenerative temperature and rate of outdoor influx. Numerical simulation has been conducted for these 11 design parameters with 3 levels. The orthogonal array L(27)(3(13)) is adopted for the analysis of variance. In the range of the parameters considered, the regenerative temperature is found to be the most dominant parameter of contribution ratio of 31.9% and 23.9% for each system configuration. In the case of confined interest of the applications such as a district cooling system or a solar system using medium-temperature collectors, the cooling performance of the regenerative evaporative cooler is the most crucial for the system performance. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.