Experimental Analysis on Chemical Dehumidification of Air by Liquid Desiccant and Desiccant Regeneration in a Packed Tower

Abstract

This paper presents the experimental tests on the chemical dehumidification of air by a liquid desiccant and desiccant regeneration carried out in an absorption/desorption tower with random packing. The experimental set-up is fully described together with measurements, procedures, data reduction, and accuracy. The experimental tests include 46 dehumidification runs and 38 desiccant regeneration runs carried out with the traditional hygroscopic solution H2O/LiBr and the new solution H2O/KCOOH in the typical operative ranges of air conditioning applications. The experimental results are reported in terms of humidity reduction, desiccant concentration change, and tower efficiency. The experimental tests show that chemical dehumidification of air by liquid desiccants ensures consistent reduction in humidity ratio, which is suitable for the application to air conditioning or drying processes. The experimental results are also compared to a one-dimensional simulation code of a packed tower: a fair agreement was found between experimental and calculated performance.