THERMAL SCIENCE

International Scientific Journal

Ghulam Qadar Chaudhary

,

Muzaffar Ali

,

Muhammad Ashiq

,

Hafiz Muhammad Ali

,

Khuram Pervez Amber

EXPERIMENTAL AND MODEL BASED PERFORMANCE INVESTIGATION OF A SOLID DESICCANT WHEEL DEHUMIDIFIER IN SUBTROPICAL CLIMATE

ABSTRACT
This paper presents real time performance analysis of a silica gel based desiccant wheel dehumidifier. Thermodynamic model is also validated through comparison under a wide range of operating conditions for subtropical climate conditions. Initially, a mathematical model is developed by using various set of equations for desiccant wheel dehumidifier in Engineering Equation Solver (EES). Afterwards, a parametric analysis of the system is performed including various design and climate parameters such as: inlet air humidity ratio, inlet air temperature, regeneration inlet humidity ratio, regeneration temperature, and rotation speed of the wheel. Then, an experimental setup of the system is established in Taxila Pakistan for the real-time performance assessment. The results revealed that the optimal rotation speed of desiccant wheel ranged from 15-17 rph. The maximum model based and experimental effectiveness is 0.45 and 0.43, respectively at regeneration temperature of 80°C. The maximum and minimum root mean square error (RMSE) values for effectiveness are 3.2% and 2.1%, respectively. Thus, the comparison between experimental and model results showed a good agreement.
KEYWORDS
solid desiccant wheel, comparative performance analysis, EES, parametric analysis, dehumidification, subtropical climate
PAPER SUBMITTED: 2017-01-27
PAPER REVISED: 2017-05-18
PAPER ACCEPTED: 2017-07-17
PUBLISHED ONLINE: 2017-08-05
DOI REFERENCE: https://doi.org/10.2298/TSCI170127165C
CITATION EXPORT: view in browser or download as text file
THERMAL SCIENCE YEAR 2019, VOLUME 23, ISSUE Issue 2, PAGES [975 - 988]
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Experimental and model based performance investigation of a solid desiccant wheel dehumidifier in subtropical climate

© 2024 Society of Thermal Engineers of Serbia. Published by the Vinča Institute of Nuclear Sciences, National Institute of the Republic of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 4.0 International licence