Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

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Applied Thermal Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apthermeng

Experimental investigation on integrated liquid desiccant e Indirect

evaporative air cooling system utilizing the Maisotesenko e Cycle
W.Z. Gao a, *, Y.P. Cheng b, A.G. Jiang a, T. Liu a, Keith Anderson c
a

Merchant Marine College, Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, 201306, China

School of Energy, Power and Mechanical Engineering, North China Electric Power University, 102206, China
c
Department of Mechanical Engineering e Engineering Mechanics, Michigan Technological University, 49931, USA
b

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 16 June 2014
Received in revised form
18 August 2014
Accepted 28 August 2014
Available online xxx

Liquid desiccant indirect evaporative cooling is an ideal alternative system for conventional vapor
compression systems to meet new economic, environmental, and regulatory challenges. This alternative
system consists of two air-handling processes: moisture removal in the dehumidier and sensible heat
removal in the M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler. The performance of the rst stage inuences the
cooling capacity of the second stage. SHR (sensible load divided by total load), dew point effectiveness,
moisture reduction, and temperature reduction were adopted as indices to describe the heat and mass
transfer performance of the integrated liquid desiccant and the M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler. The
effects of air and desiccant inlet parameters, as well as the working air ratio, on the performance of the
hybrid were experimentally investigated. The results showed that the variation of dehumidication
capacity in the rst stage directly affected the cooling capacity in the second stage when increasing the
inlet parameters of the air or desiccant. The energy balance in both the dehumidier and the M-cycle
indirect evaporative cooler were in the range of 20% for all the experiment runs. To achieve performance in the second stage, the supplied water ow rate to the wick surface had to be approximately ve
times that of the evaporative water.
2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
M-Cycle
Liquid desiccant
Indirect evaporative cooler
Heat and mass transfer

1. Introduction
The air handling process in conventional vapor compression airconditioning systems is usually divided into two stages. In the rst
stage, the air is cooled below its dew point in order to make
moisture condensed, which leads to a low evaporating temperature
and a poor coefcient of performance. In the second stage, the cold
air, dehumidied to the desired moisture, is reheated to a
comfortable temperature, resulting in a higher energy consumption
of the whole system.
The integrated liquid desiccant hybrid system is a promising
alternative to avoid the aforementioned problems. This system
combines liquid desiccant devices with an indirect evaporative air
cooling system through utilizing the former to remove the moisture
load and the latter to deal with the sensible load. The signicant
characteristic of the system is to control the moisture load and sensible load independently, avoiding unnecessary cooling and heating.

* Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: wzgao@shmtu.edu.cn, gofree@163.com (W.Z. Gao).

In fact, liquid desiccant cooling systems is popularly used. The

main advantage of the system is that no CFC (Chlorouorocarbons)
refrigerants and mechanical compressors are involved in the
cooling process. Desiccant cooling technology can handle the wet
load independently without reducing the air temperature below
dew point. Unlike conventional air conditioning systems, this system can be driven by low-grade heat sources, such as industrial
waste heat and solar energy with temperatures between 60
C and
100
C. Many experimental and theoretical investigations [1,2] have
been carried out on liquid desiccant systems. Grossman and Factor
[3] studied a packed bed regenerator/dehumidier for solar conditioning with liquid desiccant, and developed a theoretical model
to predict the performance of the packed bed dehumidier and
regenerator under various operating conditions. Oberg and Goswami [4] and Martin and Goswami [5] included the liquid phase
mass transfer resistance in their nite difference model to study the
performance of adiabatic absorption and regeneration with TEG
respectively. In recent years, some investigators have been focusing
on liquid desiccant-based hybrid systems. For example, Ahmed
et al. [6] investigated numerically a hybrid liquid desiccant system
and open cycle vapor absorption using lithium bromide solution for

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.08.066
1359-4311/ 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: W.Z. Gao, et al., Experimental investigation on integrated liquid desiccant e Indirect evaporative air cooling
system utilizing the Maisotesenko e Cycle, Applied Thermal Engineering (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.08.066

W.Z. Gao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

Nomenclature
C
h
t

specic heat capacity (kJ/kg
C)

enthalpy (kJ/kg)
temperature (
C)
humidity ratio (kg/kg)
Schmidt number

Subscripts
a
air
dp
dew point
in
inlet
mid
position between the two parts
out
outlet

the process of absorption, dehumidication, a lithium bromide

solution was regenerated in a solar regenerator, and COP (Coefcient of performance) ranged from 0.96 to 1.25 in the experiments.
Dai et al. [7] proposed ECOP (Electric coefcient of performance),
TCOP (Thermal coefcient of performance), and System COP to
predict the performance of the combined hybrid system that consisted of the liquid desiccant and vapor compression refrigerator.
The process of indirect evaporative cooling of air is well known,
where air or water approaches the wet bulb temperature of the
ambient air. However, Maisotesenko [8e10] developed a new
conguration, called M-cycle, shown in Fig. 1. This M-cycle was
claimed to enable the harnessing of the ambient air to reach a
desirable temperature using a dedicated at plate, cross-ow, and
perforated heat exchanger. Compared with the conventional indirect evaporative cooler, the M-cycle uses the same dry side and wet
side of a plate but with a much different airow conguration
creating a new thermodynamic cycle, which allows the product air
(point 1) to be cooled below the wet-bulb and towards the dewpoint temperature (point 1 / 2) of the incoming air. The detailed
heat and mass transfer mechanism can be found in Ref. [11].
Zhan et al. [12] conducted a comparison between an M-cycle crossow heat exchanger and a conventional indirect evaporative cooler.
The result indicated that the effectiveness of the former goes up by
16.7% when compared to the effectiveness of the latter. A test [9] on
an M-cycle based heat exchanger indicated that the device could
reach a wet-bulb effectiveness of 81e91% and dew-point effectiveness of 50e60%. To improve the cooling effectiveness of the
dew point cooling system, an M-cycle counter-ow heat exchanger
was recently developed and tested numerically and experimentally.
The results indicated that the counter-ow M-cycle exchanger
increased the cooling capacity by around 20% and increased webbulb and dew-point effectiveness by 15e23% when compared to
the cross-ow M-cycle exchanger of the same geometrical size and
under the same operating conditions [13]. Although the M-cycle

heat exchanger has achieved a dramatic increase in the cooling

effectiveness compared with the conventional compressor air
conditioning system, it is less effective in humid climates because
the ambient air already has a high relative humidity, which greatly
limits its energy saving capacity.
To make the M-cycle evaporative heat exchanger more practical
for humid climates, liquid desiccant integrated evaporative cooling
systems have been investigated. Desiccant solution is designed to
absorb moisture in the passing air, yielding dry hot air. Then the air
is cooled in an M-cycle evaporative heat exchanger. The desiccant
solution then needs to be regenerated for reuse by reheating and
counter owing with ambient air. A prototype of a desiccantenhanced evaporative air conditioner has been developed [14], in
which a conventional indirect evaporative cooler was designed to
cool the dehumidied air in the second-stage of the whole process.
The numerical and experimental results indicate that the DEVAP
(Desiccant enhanced evaporative air-conditioning) model used in
previous energy savings estimates [15] is correct within 10%.
In this paper, a prototype was built up and experimentally
investigated with integrated liquid desiccant and M-cycle indirect
evaporative cooler which is mainly different with DEVAP in its
second part, M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler. The purposes of
this study are to observe the temperature and humidity change in
both the air and the desiccant solution, to discuss how the initial
parameters of solution and air inuence the nal temperature
behavior, and to analyze the ability of handling air and saving
energy.
2. Integrated liquid desiccant and M-cycle indirect
evaporative cooler
Schematics of the integrated liquid desiccant and M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler are shown in Fig. 2. The whole system is
designed with two parts: the rst part is for dehumidication and
the second part is for temperature decreases.
The dehumidier (the rst part) is made up of heat and mass
exchanger in which target air ( / ) and desiccant solution
cross ows in one channel, while water and ambient air counter
ows in the adjacent channel ( / ). In order to evaporate more
water for cooling the desiccant solution, nozzles are used to spray a
high-pressure water ow resulting in a two-phase ow of water
and ambient air in airstream.
The heat and mass transfer process in the whole device can be
described as follows (see air state change in Fig. 3). For the purpose
of the experiment, it is assumed that the air in state is pretreated
at an expected humidity and temperature, and then ows through
the channels in the dehumidier, where water vapor in the air is
absorbed by the desiccant solution releasing the heat of vaporization. Part of the heat is absorbed by the desiccant solution and
transferred to the water fall through the plate, where it is cooled by
the water evaporation. This heat transfer process from desiccant

Fig. 1. Principle of the heat and mass exchanger based on M-cycle and its representation on a psychometric chart [8].

Please cite this article in press as: W.Z. Gao, et al., Experimental investigation on integrated liquid desiccant e Indirect evaporative air cooling
system utilizing the Maisotesenko e Cycle, Applied Thermal Engineering (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.08.066

W.Z. Gao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

Fig. 2. Schematic of integrated liquid desiccant and M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler.

solution to evaporating water maintains the dehumidication capacity of solution with a relatively lower vapor pressure.
The dehumidied air exits the dehumidier at state , and is
brought into both the product channel and working channel of the
M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler, where it is cooled when
owing along the ow path, due to the temperature difference
between the two channels created by the evaporation of water in

the wet channel. When owing through the holes in the plastic
plate between the working channel and the wet channel, part of the
air is diverted into the adjacent wet channel, where the air ows in
an opposite direction, taking away the sensible heat transferred
from the adjacent channels of the two sides and the evaporated
water from the saturated net surface. As a result, the air in the wet
channel gradually approaches saturation when coming across the
ow paths, and is nally discharged into the atmosphere at a mixed
state . At the same time, the air in the working channel and
product channel is gradually cooled by the adjacent wet channel to
a state below its wet bulb temperature and close to its dew point
temperature. The fraction of the air that is divided into the working
channel is dependent on the required sensible cooling capacity in
the dry channel.
3. Experimental setup
3.1. Test chamber

Fig. 3. Air state changes on a psychometric chart.

Fig. 4 shows the experimental setup schematic. The test facility

consists of several parts: a liquid desiccant system, an air handling
system, a secondary air system, and a water spraying system. The
liquid desiccant system includes a solution pump, solution tanks A
and B, solution cooler and heater B, and solution valve. The air
handling system consists of the cooling coil A, heater A, humidier,
and fan. The aforementioned devices were used to handle the liquid

Please cite this article in press as: W.Z. Gao, et al., Experimental investigation on integrated liquid desiccant e Indirect evaporative air cooling
system utilizing the Maisotesenko e Cycle, Applied Thermal Engineering (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.08.066

W.Z. Gao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

Fig. 4. Schematic of experimental rig.

desiccant and target air in order to achieve the expected parameters, before being transported into the integrated liquid desiccant
and M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler. The secondary air system
includes a fan and a valve, which is not detailed in Fig. 4. The water
spraying system is made up of a water pump, a water valve and
some sprinklers. Lithium chloride solution with lower vapor pressure was chosen as desiccant.
The integrated liquid desiccant and M-cycle indirect evaporative
cooler is the core device of the whole system, in which heat and
mass exchange occurs between the pretreated air and liquid
desiccant. The detailed parameters of the cooling device are shown
in Table 1. Lithium bromide aqueous solution, having lower surface
vapor pressure, was selected as the desiccant in the experiment.
During the experiment, four steps were required to achieve the
expected experimental parameters: (1) The target air was pretreated
to the required temperature and humidity ratio in the air handling
system. The ratio between the product air and working air in the Mcycle indirect evaporative cooler was controlled by modulation of
the exhaust air. (2) The liquid desiccant in tank A was adjusted to the
required concentration and handled to the set temperature by
modulating the capacity of cooling coil B and heater B, and pumped

Table 1
Cooling device parameters.
Parameters
Dehumidier
Total length
Total width
Total height
Product air channel thickness
Water fall channel thickness
Plastic layer
M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler
Total length
Total width
Total height
Product air channel thickness
Working dry air channel thickness
Working wet air channel thickness
Plastic plate thickness
Wick thickness

Value

Units

400
500
500
3.45
3.45
0.10

mm
mm
mm
mm
mm
mm

500
500
500
2.2
2.2
2.2
0.3
0.3

mm
mm
mm
mm
mm
mm
mm
mm

to the dehumidier with an adjustable ow. (3) The secondary air

system was then used to exchange heat and mass with spraying
water, resulting in a higher heat and mass transfer capacity between
the target air and liquid desiccant. (4) The water system was used to
add water to the wicked surface on the auxiliary channel of the
dehumidier and the working channels of the M-cycle indirect
evaporative cooler. Once all the parameters reached their set values
and maintained stability, the tests were carried out.
3.2. Measuring instruments
Desiccant and air parameters before and after each part of the
integrated liquid desiccant and M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler
were measured to investigate its performance. The measured parameters consisted of air ow rate, dry-bulb temperature and wetbulb temperature. The rate of the inlet air and supply air were
indirectly obtained by using standard nozzles, with which tested
pressure drop was captured and converted into ow rate. T-type
thermocouples were used to measure the temperature of both the
air and the desiccant. The measured desiccant parameters consisted of ow rate, densities, and inlet and outlet temperature. The
ow rate was measured by an electromagnetic owmeter, which
was specially treated to resist corrosion of the desiccant. The density of the desiccant was measured by a hydrometer, and then the
concentration could be found in the physical property chart of
lithium chloride solution according to the measured temperature
and density. Table 2 shows the specications of the different
measuring devices.
Table 2
Specications of the different measuring devices.
Parameters

Devices

Accuracy

Operational range

Air ow rate
Air temperature
Desiccant
temperature
Desiccant
ow rate
Desiccant density

Standard nozzles
Thermocouple
Thermocouple

1%
0.1
C@40
C
0.1
C@40
C

0e1500 m3/h
200e350
C
200e350
C

Electromagnetic
owmeter
Specic gravity
hydrometer

2.5%

100e1000 L/h

1 kg/m3

1100e1900 kg/m3

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system utilizing the Maisotesenko e Cycle, Applied Thermal Engineering (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.08.066

W.Z. Gao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

Table 3
Parameter range of heat and mass condition.

dp

Parameters

Unit

Initial value

Ranges

Air temperature
Air moisture
Air ow
Desiccant temperature
Desiccant ow rate
Desiccant density
Working air ratio

C
g/kg
kg/s


C
kg/s
%
%

32
14
0.2
28
0.2
35
50

24e38
9.5e19.5
0.1e0.45
22e35
0.12e0.26
28e42
30e70

3.3. Evaluation on heat and mass transfer performance

The total load of the processed air consists of latent and sensible
loads, which can be respectively handled in the dehumidier and
M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler of the whole device. The sensible heat ratio (SHR, the sensible load divided by the total load) of
the air reects the required handling capacity of the different parts
of the air conditioner. Therefore, the calculated SHR based on the
inlet and outlet air parameters could be used to evaluate the performance of simultaneous reduction in humidity and temperature.
The expression of SHR is shown in Eq. (1).

Ca ta;out  ta;in
SHR
ha;out  ha;in

(1)

Typically, moisture reduction is used to determine the amount

of vapor removed per kilogram of air in the dehumidier of the
hybrid, which is calculated as follows:

Dua ua;in  ua;mid

(2)

Similarly, the temperature reduction of the indirect evaporative

cooler of the hybrid can be described by the following relationship:

Dta ta;mid  ta;out

(3)

It must be pointed out that the temperature difference in Eq. (3)

is greater than that of the outlet and inlet air of the hybrid, because
the air in the dehumidication part is heated by the latent heat
released by the moisture.
Dew point effectiveness is another parameter used for judging
the performance of the hybrid describing the extent of the
approach of the outlet air temperature against the dew point of the
inlet air, expressed as follows:

ta;in  ta;out
ta;in  ta;dp

(4)

4. Experimental conditions and experimental methods

The effects of the air and liquid desiccant inlet parameters on
the performance of the hybrid were rst tested, and then experiments based on the different working air ratio in the M-cycle
evaporative cooler were conducted under the initial value condition of the inlet air and liquid desiccant. The initial values and value
ranges are shown in Table 3.
The experiment system was run by the initial value in Table 3
until it reached stable state, and then the data acquisition system
was carried out while one parameter was changed within the
ranges. When nished, the value of the parameter was set back to
the initial value, and then similar operations were made with other
parameters.
5. Experimental results and analysis
5.1. Energy balance in the hybrid
Fig. 5 shows the energy balance in the dehumidication part
and sensible cooling part of the hybrid for all the experimental
runs. The gure indicates that the energy differences not only in the
dehumidier but also in the M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler are
almost all within 20%, with an average difference of 8.6% and 5.3%
respectively. One phenomenon to note is that, in the dehumidier,
the energy obtained by desiccant and water is more than that
released from the air in most cases. This is because the released
heat taken away by the evaporative cooling in the adjacent layer is
difcult to be measured, since the water ow was limited and
unstable and the air parameters were greatly inuenced by the
environment.
5.2. Performance analysis
5.2.1. Effect of the airow rate
The effect of the airow rate on SHR, dew point effectiveness,
moisture reduction and temperature reduction is shown in
Fig. 6(a). The gure indicates that the dew point effectiveness,
moisture reduction, and temperature reduction all increase, while
the SHR decreases with increasing airow rate. The decrease of the
moisture reduction is due to the decrease of the heat and mass

Fig. 5. Energy balance in two parts of the hybrid.

Please cite this article in press as: W.Z. Gao, et al., Experimental investigation on integrated liquid desiccant e Indirect evaporative air cooling
system utilizing the Maisotesenko e Cycle, Applied Thermal Engineering (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.08.066

W.Z. Gao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

Fig. 6. Effect of air inlet parameters on the performance of the hybrid.

transfer time in the dehumidier between the air and desiccant.

Also, the relatively higher moisture content in the air at state 2
inevitably leads to the decrease of the water evaporation intensity
in the wet channel of the indirect evaporative cooler, resulting in a
higher outlet supply air temperature. Throughout the process, the
change of the latent heat was signicantly more than that of the
sensible heat, leading to the increase of the SHR. Note that the dew
point effectiveness in all airow rate conditions are greater than 1,
even though they are slightly decreasing with the increase of the
airow rate. This phenomenon indicates that the hybrid air conditioning system can achieve closer dew point effectiveness with
the M-cycle evaporative cooler directly used in dry area.

5.2.2. Effect of the air temperature

The variations of SHR, dew point effectiveness, moisture
reduction, and temperature reduction as a function of the air
temperature are shown in Fig. 6(b). The gure indicates that, with
the increase of the inlet air temperature, the dew point effectiveness and temperature reduction increase slightly while the SHR
and moisture reduction show an opposite change. When the inlet
air was supplied at a higher temperature, the temperature increase
in the desiccant accelerated because of the extra heat exchange
between them, resulting in a decreasing dehumidication ability of
the desiccant, and then leading to a reduction in the cooling ability
in the indirect evaporative cooler. However, the changes are

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W.Z. Gao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

relatively mild when compared with the inuence of the airow

rate. The reason is supported by the fact that, in the present experiments, the desiccant ow rate was so large (hence a large
thermal capacity), that the inuence of the air inlet temperature
was relatively weak.
5.2.3. Effect of the air humidity ratio
Fig. 6(c) illustrates the effect of the air humidity ratio on the
performance of the hybrid. With an increase in air humidity ratio,
the humidication capacity of the desiccant can be improved for
the increased surface vapor pressure difference between air and

desiccant. However, the air humidity ratio from the dehumidier is

still higher than that of the low humidity ratio inlet air condition.
Therefore, as the inlet air of the indirect evaporative cooler, it had a
negative inuence on the cooling capacity, causing a higher temperature of the supplied air. Thus, the SHR decreases quickly
because the ratio of the latent heat increases in the whole air
handling process.
5.2.4. Effect of the desiccant inlet temperature
Dew point effectiveness, moisture reduction and temperature
reduction decrease while SHR decreases with increasing desiccant

Fig. 7. Effect of air inlet parameters on the performance of the hybrid.

Please cite this article in press as: W.Z. Gao, et al., Experimental investigation on integrated liquid desiccant e Indirect evaporative air cooling
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W.Z. Gao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

inlet temperature, as shown in Fig. 7(a). An increase in desiccant

inlet temperature caused a decrease in desiccant surface vapor
pressure and hence a decrease in mass transfer potential within the
dehumidier. Similarly, as the inlet air of the indirect evaporative
cooler, an increase in temperature and humidity of the air from the
dehumidier weakened the potential evaporation of water in the
wet channel. Although moisture reduction and temperature
reduction decreased at the same time, the decrease of the former
one was more obvious than the latter one when converted into heat
change, which caused SHR to increase with the desiccant inlet
temperature.
5.2.5. Effect of the desiccant ow rate
Moisture reduction and temperature reduction both increased
with increasing desiccant ow rate, as shown in Fig. 7(b). With
increasing desiccant ow rate, the variation of the desiccant temperature could be restrained for the increased heat capacity. Low
temperature of the desiccant within the dehumidier could ensure
a high vapor difference between desiccant and air. Thus, the air
humidity ratio out of the humidier became lower, which could
obviously increase the cooling ability of the indirect evaporative
cooler. Although both moisture reduction and temperature reduction increased signicantly, the dew point effectiveness was almost
unaffected. The reason for this is that the increase of the outlet air
temperature from the dehumidier offset the increase of temperature reduction in the indirect evaporative cooler. In addition, the
decrease of SHR also indicates the increased capacity of
dehumidication.
5.2.6. Effect of the desiccant inlet concentration
Fig. 7(c) shows the effect of desiccant inlet concentration on the
hybrid performance. Compared with the gure in Fig. 7(b), similar
tendency with different value change of the four performance indicators in Fig. 7(c) can be found. High concentration desiccant
would result in a mass transfer potential driven by the moisture
difference between the desiccant surface and air.

water evaporation in the wet channel and heat transfer between

the dry channel and wet channel are not signicantly affected by
working airow rate. When increased working air owed
through the wet channel, more water evaporated into the air;
however, this caused the exhaust air to become less and less
saturated, resulting in very little help to the heat transfer between the two channels.
5.2.8. Effect of the other factors
In the dehumidier, the heat released from the mass transfer
was mostly absorbed by the evaporating water on the exhaust side,
and carried away by the exhaust air at a state closer to saturation.
This could keep the dehumidication ability of the liquid desiccant
for more time, and the air owing out from the dehumidier at a
lower temperature. In the present experiments, the air used to
evaporate the water came from the atmosphere, whose temperature and humidity ratio kept changing during the six days of the
experiment. In order to reduce this effect, circulating water was
supplied to the wick surface and a longer time run before other
conditions was ensured. These measures to some extent eliminated
the adverse effects of the instability. Further testing will be taken to
assess their effects in the next step of research.
In the M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler, the water ow rate
has some inuence on the water evaporation in wet channel, which
indirectly affects the heat transfer across the channel wall. The
results of the pre-experiments show that, when the water ow rate
was less than two times the evaporation rate, the wick surface was
not sufciently wetted, resulting in a negative effect on the cooling
capacity of the wet channel. Once the water ow rate was increased
to more than eight times, the wick surface was well wetted;
however, the evaporation efciency was reduced because of the
reduction of the heat and mass transfer area. In order to compromise the above two factors in the present tests, a water ow rate
ve times the evaporation rate was chosen to achieve the optimized evaporation.
6. Conclusion

5.2.7. Effect of the working air ratio

Fig. 8 illustrates how the working air ratios within the indirect
evaporative cooler inuence the performance of the hybrid. Since
there were no variations in the working condition of the dehumidier, the only changed value of the supply air in the second
stage of the hybrid was temperature, enabling it to meet a range
of supply air condition. The gure shows that although the
variation of the working air ratio covers a range from 0.3 to 0.7,
the temperature reduction only changes approximately from
15
C to 20
C. This phenomenon can be seen as proof that the

This paper describes advancement in liquid desiccant cooling

systems through the M-cycle. The main advantage that the hybrid
offers is the capability of using only one apparatus to remove
moisture in the st stage and remove sensible heat in the second
stage. SHR, dew point effectiveness, moisture reduction and temperature reduction were adopted as indices to describe the heat
and mass transfer performances of the integrated liquid desiccant
and M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler. Obtained results are
summarized as follows:

Fig. 8. Effect of working air ratio on the performance of the hybrid.

Please cite this article in press as: W.Z. Gao, et al., Experimental investigation on integrated liquid desiccant e Indirect evaporative air cooling
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W.Z. Gao et al. / Applied Thermal Engineering xxx (2014) 1e9

(1) The energy balance in both the dehumidier and M-cycle

indirect evaporative cooler are within the range of 20% for
all the experiment runs, despite that in the dehumidier the
energy obtained by desiccant and water was always more
than the energy released from the air.
(2) Increasing the inlet air ow rate and humidity ratio improves
the dehumidication ability of the dehumidier, but
weakens the cooling ability of the M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler because of its high temperature and/or high
humidity ratio out of the dehumidier. Increasing the inlet
air temperature has negative effects on the heat and mass
transfer both in the dehumidier and in the M-cycle indirect
evaporative cooler.
(3) The removal capacity of both moisture in dehumidier and
sensible heat in M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler can be
improved signicantly at the same time while increasing the
liquid desiccant ow rate or inlet concentration. However,
the inuence of the desiccant temperature shows an opposite direction.
(4) Long time pre-running of the cycling water in the dehumidier is necessary to eliminate the inuence of the air
uncertainty. The optimized ratio between the supply water
ow and evaporative water ow was proven by experiment
to be ve, which can achieve high heat and mass transfer in
the M-cycle indirect evaporative cooler.
Acknowledgements
The research described in this manuscript was supported by
National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51106094),
Innovation Program of Shanghai Municipal Education Commission
(Grant No. 13YZ089) and Fundamental Research Funds for the
Central Universities (JB2014239). Their support is gratefully
acknowledged.

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Please cite this article in press as: W.Z. Gao, et al., Experimental investigation on integrated liquid desiccant e Indirect evaporative air cooling
system utilizing the Maisotesenko e Cycle, Applied Thermal Engineering (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2014.08.066