Performance investigation of a liquid desiccant regenerator with CFD technology

Abstract The regenerator is a critical component for a liquid desiccant dehumidification system. Compared with the dehumidifier, the studies of the regenerator are much fewer. Besides, most of the present models only focused on the outlet parameters while usually ignored what happened in its interior, and therefore the underlying heat and mass transfer mechanism was remained to be explored. In the paper, a numerical model was established based on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) technology. It revealed that the simulation results agreed well with the experimental ones within an average deviation of 10.2%. The response time for regeneration time was significantly affected by the velocity of air and solution. A greater velocity led to a shorter response time due to an enhanced mixture in vertical direction. The regeneration performance could be improved at higher solution flow rate as a result of greater interface area ratio and faster solution surface renewal. The influence of inlet air temperature on the regeneration process was relatively smaller compared to other factors. And it was found that increasing the solution temperature could be more beneficial to regeneration performance than reducing the mass fraction of water vapor at air inlet.