Energy Consumption of Solar-assisted Internally Cooled/Heated Liquid Desiccant Air-conditioning System in Hong Kong

Solar-assisted liquid desiccant air-conditioning system (SLDAC) has been considered as a promising application as traditional AC systems have many problems. In this paper, the operation performance of the SLDAC of a typical commercial building in Hong Kong was investigated, for evaluating the energy-saving potential. Combing the numerical model of individual component and inputting the weather data and load profile, the annual energy consumptions of SLDAC and traditional system could be obtained. The simulation results show that the electricity driven LDAC is not suitable for the commercial building due to the high energy demand in the regeneration. But, the solar-assisted system with thermal storage could provide promising energy saving potential. However, with the cooling tower as the only cooling source of the dehumidifier, the dehumidification capacity could not satisfy the requirement and only up to 12.5% of electricity consumption could be saved annually compared to traditional systems. Therefore, to improve the energy-saving potential, extra cooling source should be supplied for the application of SLDAC of buildings in Hong Kong.