EVAPORATIVE COOLING CYCLE FOR SOLAR AIR CONDITIONING AND HOT WATER HEATING

ABSTRACT

Using excess summer heat from solar collectors to drive
desiccant cooling systems is often proposed. A two wheel
desiccant system using solar heat for desiccant
regeneration is typically discussed. The two wheel system
uses a desiccant wheel that is “matched” with a heat
exchanger wheel. The heat exchanger recycles heat for
the desiccant regeneration and improves system
efficiency. These systems are generally limited to
delivering warm dry air or cool humid air in most parts of
the US.
A newly patented desiccant cooling cycle creates two dry
air streams. This new cycle uses indirect evaporative
cooling of one air stream to cool the second stream.
Additional direct evaporative cooling allows cool and dry
air to be delivered to the building. Regeneration exhaust
heat can provide water heating. Combining the system
with a new solar air heating system should provide a
significant solar heating, cooling, and hot water delivery
system.


1. BACKGROUND

Low temperature heating dominates all residential,
commercial, and industrial end uses of energy within
buildings. Nearly 61% of the energy used across all
sectors of the economy is for low temperature heating
uses. These heating end uses include space heating,
industrial process heating, water heating, boiler heating,
and clothes drying.
The second greatest energy end use is for cooling.
Another 13% of all building energy end use is for
refrigeration or space cooling. In the late 1990's, the
combination of all heating and cooling energy end uses cost
US consumers nearly $180 billion per year.
Most of this energy use requires the consumption of fossil
fuels. In most cases, the energy conversion devices, such as
boilers or electric heat pumps, operate at low efficiency
compared to the fuel they consume. In almost all fossil
energy heating and cooling systems, the conversion from the
primary fuel (gas, oil, coal, etc.) to heating or cooling is done
at less than 100% efficiency. This is often described as a
coefficient of performance of less than 1.0. (COP < style="font-weight: bold;">3. DEVELOPMENT OF AN INTEGRATED SOLAR
DESICCANT EVAPORATIVE COOLING CYCLE

With the solar, desiccant, and evaporative cooling industries
each targeting different geographic or technological
problems, there has been little joint development. Solar
thermal work is concentrated on flat plate water heating
systems, which are generally not cost effective for space
heating applications. In general, the northern climates, with
high heating needs, are where solar space heating could
deliver the greatest value, but thi is also where minimal
cooling energy is required in the summer. Evaporative
cooling is targeted to the dry southwest. Desiccant cooling is
targeted to the humid southeast.
Despite the differences in geographic, technological, and
economic conditions that favor the limited separate use of
individual technologies, there is a potential to draw together
the best characteristics of each of these super efficient
technologies into one super efficient system. The combined
solar desiccant evaporative system can provide a significant
portion of the space heating, hot water heating and space.

4. NEW TECHNOLOGIES

Recent patents in each technology (Refs. 1 & 2) have
overcome some of the problems holding back greater
deployment. Tests of these new technologies in the past 4
years indicate that workable systems can be deployed.
These systems have shown the technical capacity to
deliver solar heating and desiccant cooling with indirect
and direct evaporative cooling. Specifically, these new
technologies include the solar thermal tile system shown
in Figures 3 and 4 and the NovelAire desiccant
evaporative cooling cycle
The solar thermal tile system is a mid temperature air
heating collector. It is designed to function as the weather
tight roof of a building or as a rack mounted solar
collector on low sloped roofs or in ground mounted
applications. It is designed to be installed at a cost
comparable to high quality slate and tile roofing, which is
substantially less expensive than existing mid temperature
collectors. As a result, the system can be economically
installed to handle the larger space heating loads, even
with the seasonal reduction in productivity during the
summer months.
Stagnation tests show that the systems can achieve
internal air temperatures of greater than 200 degrees F (94
C) and more than 130F (72 C) above ambient
temperature. An air flow test with an early prototype
showed outlet air temperatures of 160 -180 F (71-82 C)
are possible. Higher temperatures are expected with
optimal orientation, improved materials such as selective
surface absorbers, and optimal air flow.
One version of the NovelAire desiccant evaporative cooling
cycle is shown in Figure 5. The cycle uses excess air passing
through the desiccant wheel to create excess dry air to
support the evaporative cooling process. After leaving the
desiccant wheel (B), the hot dry air is cooled in the supply
side of a heat exchanger (C). The warm dry air is then split
into two air streams. The first stream (C-CX-CY) supports an
indirect evaporative cooling of the second stream (C-C’).
This cools the second stream without adding any humidity at
state point C’. The final direct evaporative cooling stage from
point C’ to D can adjust the temperature and humidity to any
point on the line CD.
The regeneration side of the NovelAire cycle begins by
recovering heat via the exhaust side of the heat exchanger.
The heat transfer in the supply side of the heat exchanger
is from the full air stream with excess dry air. This is
more air flow than the reduced volume air which actually
enters the building and returns as exhaust. As a result, the
smaller volume of exhaust air from the building is not
sufficient, by itself, to cool the full excess air flowin the
heat exchanger. Therefore, the initial cooling of the
exhaust side of the heat exchanger is from a stream of
outside air at state point A.
This outside air flow, passing through the first stage of the
heat exchanger, cools the hottest air entering at state point
B on the supply side. The outside air is then exhausted
back to the atmosphere. Then, the exhaust air from within
the building, passes through the second stage of the heat
exchanger. The exhaust air further cools the supply air to
state point C, while the exhaust air heats to state point G.
The exhaust air is then heated from state point G to I by
an external heat source, such as gas heat, shown in Figure
5. The high temperature exhaust is then used to regenerate
the desiccant and exhausted to the atmosphere at state
point J.
The obvious difference in the psychometric is that the
final cooling line C’ D is moved to a cooler temperature
than the “2 wheel limit line”. This allows cool dry air to
be introduced to the building to overcome the internal and
external heating and humidity loads that a traditional 2
wheel systems can not handle.
What is not obvious from the psychometrics is that the
gas heating of the smaller exhaust air stream must be
increased to regenerate the larger volume of desiccant in
the larger wheel. The larger wheel is required to dry the
excess air required by the cycle.
NovelAire constructed and tested a desiccant evaporative
cooling system in the mid 1990s. Patent documentation
(Ref. 2) from 1998 provides an example calculation for a
cycle that would produce 5.4 tons of cooling (64 MJ) with
a COP of about 0.92. If the system were solely dependent
on natural gas or other traditional energy source, then
other cooling technologies, such as compression
refrigeration, would generally be more cost effective.
However, if large volumes of low cost solar heated air are
available, then the economics can swing in favor of the
solar desiccant evaporative cooling cycle. In addition,
because the COP of the solar thermal system is much
higher that for natural gas combustion (~4 for solar vs. 1
max. for gas) the COP of the integrated cooling systems
can be greatly increased.
The efficiency of the system is further improved by using the
high temperature waste heat from any of the available air
streams involved in the desiccant regeneration. These air
streams from the heat exchanger exhaust or from the
desiccant wheel exhaust are between 45 and 70 degrees C
(112-158 F). By using this heat source to heat water for
domestic use, the system increases its productivity, with
essentially no additional primary energy being used.

5. INTEGRATING THE NEW TECHNOLOGIES

There are several ways to integrate the two technologies. One
version of the integrated cycle is shown in Figure 6.
The cycle shown includes:
1) a solar thermal tile system,
2) a NovelAire desiccant evaporative cooling systems,
3) one additional evaporative cooling system between
state points E and F, and
4) a hot water heating system using the waste heat from
the desiccant regeneration at state point J.
The psychometrics of the integrated cycle are shown in
Figure 7. The increased cooling for the heat exchanger by
the building air can be seen from the change in state point
temperature from E to F. The first stage cooling of the heat
exchanger from A to L can also be seen.
The particular integrated cycle shown in Figure 7 does not
use recovered heat from the heat exchanger for desiccant
regeneration. Instead, the excess solar heated air from the
solar thermal tile roof is used as the primary heating source
for desiccant regeneration. (An alternative cycle could
introduce air from point L into the solar thermal tile roof
system.)
Supplemental gas heat, as shown in Figure 7, is used to
support desiccant regeneration during cloudy days, and
possibly early evening cooling hours, or other hours when
solar heating is not 100% effective at delivering cool dry
air for cooling or dehumidification. With minor
adaptation, the supplemental gas heat can also provide the
peak space heating required during the coldest winter
days.
The hot water heating systems uses waste heat from the
desiccant regeneration to heat water via an air-to-water
heat exchanger. During the rest of the year, solar heated
air from the thermal tile roof would be ducted to the same
air- to-water heat exchanger for hot water production.
Because the solar heating system would provide an air to
water heat exchanger for domestic water heating in nonsummer
months, there is little added cost for the heat
recovery for water heating. The only added cost would be
the duct work and dampers to bypass the desiccant
regeneration when cooling is not required.

6. EXPECTED PERFORMANCE

The solar thermal tile roof has been demonstrated to reach
stagnation temperatures of 200+ deg. F. (93+ C) and 130
F (72 C) above ambient. Even though delivered air
temperatures would be somewhat below the 200 degree F
(93 C) temperature, these outlet conditions are adequate
to support desiccant regeneration.
However, there is a significant likelihood of
raising collector outlet temperatures using
several routine measures that were not
incorporated in the original stagnation tests.
For example, the solar thermal tile test
section used painted absorber plates instead
of selective surfaces. No anti- reflective
coatings were used on the tiles. The
collector was at a slope of 20 degrees from
the horizontal, an angle that would roughly
equal a roof pitch of 4 in 12. The sun was at
an angle of 37 degrees below perpendicular
to the collector. Given improvements in any
of these test conditions, the collector would
likely sustain higher delivered air
temperatures. These higher temperatures are
comparable to other mid temperature air
heating collectors which were widely
researched in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
The higher temperatures would also provide
additional desiccant regeneration capacity
and greater cooling. Finally, because the
output of the solar thermal tile system is
heated air, it is compatible with the air
drying of the desiccants. This eliminates the temperature drop
from a water-to-air heat exchanger that would be required for
a liquid based system.
Reference 3 described the economics of the solar thermal tile
system. The analysis indicated that the 600 sq ft. (56 sq. m.)
solar thermal tile system used for heating only, could save
$655 per year when competing against $9 per million BTU
delivered natural gas. Under these conditions, the system
showed a 10 year payback for space heating and water
heating and handled 56 % of the total space heating and hot
water load for a 2000 sq. ft. (186 sq. m.) house in a Boston,
MA climate.
The analysis has been extended to the integrated system and
evaluated based on climate conditions for Charlotte, NC.
Charlotte has both heating and air conditioning loads. The
600 sq. ft. (56 sq. m.) system would deliver energy cost
savings as shown in Figure 8. The total energy savings across
the year would be 116 gigajoules (110 million Btu) and only
28 gigajoules (26 million Btu) of fan power would be
required. The system would handle 87 % of the annual
household heating, cooling, and hot water energy load as
derived from EIA data from 1993 (Ref. 4). The system would
save $847 per year with gas at $9 per million Btu
($8.86/gigajoule) and electricity at $.0785 per KWHR.
In the summer months, the system would handle 100% of the
cooling load of the 2000 sq ft. (186 sq. m.) house. These
calculations assume a collector efficiency of 35% even during
summer cooling with high collector operating temperatures.
However, if the collector operating temperatures reduce
efficiency to only 20%, the system still handles 81% of
the seasonal cooling load. Throughout the year, the
systems would handle 74% of the space heating load and
75% of the water heating load, for a total of 87% of the
entire heating and cooling load.
However, if the collector operating temperatures reduce
efficiency to only 20%, the system still handles 81% of
the seasonal cooling load. Throughout the year, the
systems would handle 74% of the space heating load and
75% of the water heating load, for a total of 87% of the
entire heating and cooling load.

7. ADDITIONAL RESEARCH

Additional research is recommended in the following
areas:
1) Evaluate alternative solar tile roof components to
establish the most cost effective summer outlet
temperature for the solar roof when supporting desiccant
regeneration.
2)Prepare a desiccant wheel that is optimized to the outlet
temperatures of the solar roof.
3) Assemble the components in an operational prototype
and test for cooling performance in a suburban setting

8. REFERENCES

(1) U.S. Patent 5,651,226 to Archibald dated July 29, 1997.
(2) U.S. Patent 5,758,508 to Belding, et.al. dated June 2,
1998.
(3) John Archibald, Building Integrated Solar Thermal
Roofing Systems; History, Current Status, and Future
Promise, Proceedings of the ASES Annual Conference,
American Solar Energy Society, 1999 Report on Solar Water
Heating Quantitative Survey Dec 1997-Sept 1998, Focus
Marketing Services, NREL report SR-550-26484, April 1999
(4) Energy Information Administration, Household Energy
Consumption and Expenditures 1993, October 1995.