Performance Evaluation of a Three-Fluid Liquid Desiccant Membrane Air-Conditioning System.

Liquid-to-air membrane energy exchangers (LAMEEs) transfer heat and moisture between a liquid desiccant solution and airstreams through vapor-permeable membranes. Liquid desiccant membrane air-conditioning (M-LDAC) systems implement LAMEEs to meet the latent or dehumidification loads in buildings. M-LDAC systems are better suited to dehumidify air than conventional air-conditioning (CAC) systems. One way to enhance the performance of LAMEEs is to install cooling/heating tubes inside the solution channels to control the solution temperature inside the LAMEE. Such an exchanger is called a three-fluid LAMEE. The main objectives of this study are to develop a Transient System Simulation (TRNSYS) model of the three-fluid LAMEE and use it to simulate the performance of a three-fluid MLDAC system under low, medium, and high latent load conditions. The results show that the three-fluid M-LDAC system outperforms the two-fluid M-LDAC system under the high and medium latent load conditions, whereas the two-fluid M-LDAC system outperforms the three-fluid M-LDAC system under the lowest latent load condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]