Investigation on capacity matching in a heat pump and hollow fiber membrane-based two-stage liquid desiccant hybrid air dehumidification system

The heat pump and hollow fiber membrane-based two-stage liquid desiccant hybrid air dehumidification system is promising recently because solution droplets can be prevented from crossing over into the process air. The quasi-isothermal processes are realized by two-stage dehumidification processes and the system performance is improved. In this study, a novel capacity matching index (CMI) is introduced to evaluate the energy capacity matching of the system through modeling study. It is found that CMI is usually lower than 1 under the typical hot and humid weather condition like South China and the demand and supply of energy in the system is mismatching. As inlet air temperature rises, the dehumidification rates, CMI, EER and COP all decrease. But CMI is almost constant with different inlet air humidity. The influence of air inlet temperature to dehumidifiers and regenerators on the system performance is also investigated. The higher the inlet temperature of dehumidifiers is, the larger the CMI, EER and COP are. The dehumidification rates and CMI both grow with an increase in the inlet temperature of regenerators. It is beneficial for energy balance of the system and high moisture loads, but the side effect is that the EER and COP both decrease.