Performance analysis of an automotive heat pump system with desiccant coated heat exchangers

Even though an electric vehicle has the advantage of high efficiency, low emission, and more space in the engine room as the combustion engine is not used, it has the disadvantage that consumes the stored energy of the battery a lot for heating and defogging due to the absence of the waste heat from the internal combustion engine. The electric vehicle must operate a heat pump system to heat up the cabin air and to remove the moisture, unlike traditional vehicles. Thereby, the energy consumption of the automotive heat pump should be minimized as much as possible for enhancing the driving mileage to relieve range anxiety. Therefore, the desiccant coated heat exchanger is introduced for dehumidification and waste heat recovery by simultaneous heat and mass transfer. To analyze the energy consumption of the automotive heat pump system, the numerical model, which consists of the cabin thermal load model, the desiccant coated heat exchanger model, and the automotive heat pump model, is made with validation using experimental data. The simulation was conducted to investigate the effect of the desiccant coated heat exchanger on the energy usage of an electric vehicle under various operation conditions. Consequently, the results show that the proposed system requires less energy as compared with the conventional cases.