Analysis of a Hybrid System of Liquid Desiccant and CO2 Transcritical Cycles

Abstract A novel hybrid system of liquid desiccant and CO 2 transcritical cycles is proposed, where LiCl solutions are used as desiccants. Dissipated heat of the transcritical cycle is used to regenerate LiCl solutions, and the heat could be utilized efficiently with large temperature decrease. From insight of thermodynamics, model of the hybrid system is built. Based on the calculation results, temperature of the utilized heat could range from 120 °C to 50 °C. In addition, temperature and humidity independence control (THIC) could be conducted by the hybrid system. Under the same dehumidification capacity, its evaporation temperature could be obviously lifted. For the hybrid system, compression work ( W ) of the CO 2 transcritical cycle could be reduced from 15% to 26%. Futher more, compared with cooling dehumidification at 7 °C by a conventional CO 2 transcritical cycle, total power consumption of the hybrid system could be reduced by 13.7% at an evaporation temperature of 12 °C. More notablely, dehumidification efficiency of the hybrid system ( COP hs ′) could be increased from 15% to 30% compared with dehumidification efficiency of cooling dehumidification by CO 2 transcritical cycle ( COP cs ).