Assessment of a desiccant cooling system in a traditional and innovative nanofluid HVAC system

Abstract

The topic of energy saving is a constant in everyday life, and it is widespread all over the world. Space heating using solar panels is the most used renewable source of energy, but the application of solar energy for cooling the fluids used for refrigeration is growing very fast. Among the techniques used for refrigeration, this work focused on Desiccant Cooling. In particular, with the use of dynamic simulation software, it was possible to study the heat supplied and the energy consumption of a Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning (HVAC) system of a university building and to compare consumption with those of a Desiccant Cooling system applied to the same building. Four different cases were simulated: two related to the HVAC system, one of which operates with water and glycol and the other one with nanofluid, and the other ones to the Desiccant Cooling system with both types of fluids mentioned above. Keeping the same energy demand of the building in all the simulations, it was found that in summer the Desiccant Cooling system had higher performance than the traditional HVAC system and that the use of the nanofluid in both types of conditioning systems further increased the performance of 21%. Simulations were carried out using TRNSYS software.