Investigating similarity between a small-scale liquid-to-air membrane energy exchanger (LAMEE) and a full-scale (100 L/s) LAMEE: Experimental and numerical results

Abstract Liquid-to air membrane energy exchangers (LAMEEs) are novel membrane based energy exchangers that allow simultaneous heat and moisture transfer between salt solutions and air streams. The similarity between a small-scale (2.5 L/s) LAMEE and a full-scale (100 L/s) LAMEE is investigated, both experimentally and numerically, in this paper. Dimensional analysis of the coupled heat and mass transfer equations in the air-side, solution side and membrane of the LAMEE shows that five important dimensionless parameters affect the performance of LAMEEs: (1) number of heat transfer units, NTU, (2) thermal capacity ratio, Cr ∗ , (3) number of mass transfer units, NTU m , (4) mass flow rate ratio, m ∗ , and (5) operating factor, H ∗ . The differences in the small-scale and full-scale LAMEEs effectivenesses are numerically investigated for these five important dimensionless parameters. The results show that in most cases the differences between the small-scale and full-scale LAMEE effectivenesses are less than 2%. The comparison between the experimental and numerical sensible, latent and total effectivenesses of the small-scale LAMEE and the full-scale LAMEE shows that there is a similarity between the small-scale and full-scale LAMEEs, and that the small-scale LAMEE effectiveness results can be used to predict the performance of the full-scale LAMEE.