Energy Performance Analysis of a Heat Pump-driven Liquid Desiccant System

Heat pump driven liquid desiccant (HPLD) system, which takes advantage of cooling capacity and heating capacity from evaporator and condenser respectively, have been developed rapidly in recent years. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate energy saving potential of a HPLD system compared to a conventional liquid desiccant (LD) system. R-134a was used for the refrigerant in the heat pump and aqueous solution of lithium chloride was used in the LD system. A simulation based on an empirical model of an absorber was conducted, and total energy consumption in the proposed HPLD system were compared and analyzed with that of the conventional LD system. As a result, the proposed system showed better performance than the conventional liquid desiccant system in the aspect of energy saving. Moreover, HPLD is expected to have a great advantage in terms of compactness from the replacement of the cooling and heating devices in the conventional LD system with a heat pump.