Modelling of a dew-point effectiveness correlation for Maisotsenko cycle heat and mass exchanger

Abstract The Maisotsenko cycle heat and mass exchanger (HMX) has been proven to be a high-efficiency facility, which can be regarded as heat recovery to improve the efficiency of energy supply system or directly applied as an evaporative cooler. Many experimental tests and numerical simulations have been conducted to verify its performance and help to serve energy supply system simulation. However, it is impossible to conduct an experimental test over a wide range of working conditions and employing the numerical model for system simulation is also inconvenient. Therefore, the modelling of empirical correlations for the practical application of HMX becomes necessary. This paper conducts a detailed theoretical analysis of heat and mass transfer in HMX, and the influential dimensionless parameters on dew-point effectiveness were identified. A dew-point effectiveness correlation for HMX was proposed based on the detected parameters. The results indicated that the mean absolute deviations of the proposed correlation were 2.35% and 6.75% when compared with numerical simulation and experimental data respectively. The newly proposed correlation could be used directly to evaluate the performance of HMX or further benefit the system simulation when the HMX is used as heat recovery component.