STUDY ON VENTILATION USING SOLAR ASSISTED DESICCANT WHEEL

Abstract

Now-a-days, the requirement of dry air is increasing day by day. It plays important role for improving the process, product or conditions in many industries such as food, pharmaceutical and chemical industry etc. The purpose of using dry air is to prevent edibles and other products from fungus and hazardous effects. The present work shows an experimental investigation of major parameters which affect the performance of a desiccant wheel. In this work, a desiccant wheel having coating of silica gel and a honey comb type structure was used. A DC adopter was used to rotate the desiccant wheel. Heater and waste energy such as exhaust gases were used as a regeneration heat source. Humid or atmospheric air passes through desiccant wheel, where dehumidification takes place which convert humid air into the dry air. The working parameters were, mass flow rate of air in the range of 40.73 kg/hr to 122.18 kg/hr, rotational speed of wheel varied from 10 to 25 rph and regeneration temperature changed from 303 K to 313 K on the wheel. Experiments have been conducted to find the optimum value of working parameter to get an efficient system. The experiments show that, for working parameters, the relative humidity of the air decreased consequently efficiency of desiccant wheel increased. This type of research is very helpful in tropical countries like India because it does not require electrical energy and provides good quality of dry air for air conditioning