Dehumidification of Air by Chemical Liquid Desiccant in a Packed Column and Its Heat and Mass Transfer Effectiveness

The pressure drop, carryover, leak, and corrosion in traditional liquid desiccant dehumidification towers are of serious concern in real applications, especially when using tri ethylene glycol (TEG) as a desiccant. In this study the cellulose rigid media pads are used as the packing for its low pressure drop. A special coated material is used to prevent corrosion and leakage problems. The packing arrangement minimized solution carryover. The alternative method that can be used to predict the dehumidifier outlet conditions is the effectiveness method. Theoretical and experimental studies of the simultaneous heat and mass transfer to evaluate the effectiveness of the packed dehumidifier are conducted. The model predictions are compared with the experimental results with very good agreement. Through the experimental study of the dehumidifier, important design variables that affect the effectiveness are defined and compared with the correlations reported by previous studies. The previous correlations are assessed and the errors are reported.