Energy Saving through Personal Air Conditioning by Means of Indirect Evaporative Cooling using Desiccant Dehumidification

To reduce energy consumption for air conditioning and thereby reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that are a major cause of global warming, a simulation was performed of personal air conditioning for office buildings by means of indirect evaporative cooling using desiccant dehumidification. It was found that a batch method of daily reactivation (desorption) of adsorbent allowed the weight and size of the system to be reduced to give a simplified configuration that could be built into an office partition. It was also found that use of waste heat in the regeneration of desiccant afforded energy saving. Compared with conventional air conditioning, the proposed system operated to give the same personal conditions of temperature and humidity was found to reduce the total heat load by over 12% and the power consumption by 37%.