Operational experiences with solar air collector driven desiccant cooling systems

Component performance and seasonal operational experiences have been analysed for desiccant cooling systems powered by solar air collectors. Measurements during the commissioning phase in Spain (public library) and in Germany (production hall) showed that the dehumidification efficiency of the sorption rotors was 80% and the humidification efficiency of the contact evaporators was 85-86%. Only in a two-stage desiccant system monitored in China (laboratory building), a dehumidification efficiency of 88% was reached. The rotary heat exchangers only had 62-68% measured heat recovery efficiency, which is lower than specified. Seasonal performance monitoring carried out in the German installation showed that average seasonal COP's were close to 1.0, when related to all operation hours. COP's increase if low regeneration temperatures are used with low dehumidification rates, which is often sufficient for moderate German climatic conditions, but much less so in the humid Chinese climate. Electrical COP's for the German system including air distribution were between 1.7 and 4.6 and reach values of 7.4, when only additional pressure drops of the desiccant unit are considered. It could be shown that conventional control strategies lead to high auxiliary energy consumption, for, example if fixed heating setpoint temperatures are used. Furthermore the solar air collector energy yield was very low in the German system, as regeneration was only used when all other options such as humidification at high air volume flows did not reduce the room air temperature enough. The studies showed that the measured auxiliary energy consumption could be reduced to near zero, if regeneration temperature setpoints were not fixed to constant values. The solar air collector efficiency was good at about 50% both for the flat plate collectors used in Spain and Germany and the Chinese vacuum tube solution. A cost analysis demonstrated the viability of the concept, if some funding of the high investment costs is provided. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.