Energy Saving Potential Of Solar-driven Desiccant Wheel Cooling System

Realizing the sustainable development of the energy environment, and reducingthe building energy have become one of the important tasks of energy saving andemission reduction in our country at present. Building energy conservation must relyon new energy conservation technology and equipment. Therefore, it is of greatsignificance to research and develop new air conditioning mode and discuss usingnew renewable energy to achieve architectural air conditioning.This paper analyses a novel hybrid dehumidification process air conditioningsystem of desiccant wheel combined with traditional cooling dehumidifyingtechnology. In order to reduce renewable energy consumption of the hybrid system,solar water heating system will be used for rotary dehumidifier regeneration toimprove the energy saving ratio of system. Based on the detailed analysis of operatingprinciple of the system’s components, the paper establishes the mathematical model ofall parts and writes the system simulation program using the established mathematicalmodel. Through the setting up experiment equipment, the performance parameters ofsystem’s major components are tested through experiment, and these parameters willbe used for system simulation. Through the system simulation, energy saving ratio ofsystem which the electric energy and solar energy as renewable energy sourcesrespectively is analyzed in detail, the energy saving potential of the system using inmajor cities in China is worked out. And energy saving ratio is taken as evaluationindex to optimize the best regeneration temperature of cities. Research results are asfollows:(1) The technology of desiccant wheel cooling combined with traditional coolingdehumidifying can effectively solve the problem of high humidity control in southChina.(2)The novel hybrid air conditioning system has a greater energy saving potentialin our country, especially using the solar energy as a renewable energy, energy savingpotential is bigger, and the highest energy saving ratio can amount to30%.(3) Compared with electricity as renewable energy, solar energy regeneration can improve the energy saving ratio10~15%, it is a kind of very good way to integratethe hybrid system and renewable energy for renewable energy utilization.