Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122

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Energy and Buildings

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Experimental investigation and theoretical analysis of solar heating and

humidification system with desiccant rotor
Dong La, Yanjun Dai ∗ , Hui Li, Yong Li, Jeremiah K. Kiplagat, Ruzhu Wang
Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: In this paper, a solar heating system, which combines the technologies of evacuated tube solar air collec-
Solar heating tor and rotary desiccant humidification together, has been configured, tested and modeled. The system
Desiccant humidification mainly includes 15 m2 solar air collectors and a desiccant air-conditioning unit. Two operation modes
Thermal comfort
are designed, namely, direct solar heating mode and solar heating with desiccant humidification mode.
Air conditioning
Performance model of the system has been created in TRNSYS. The objective of this paper is to check
TRNSYS
the applicability of solar heating and evaluate the feasibility and potential of desiccant humidification
for improving indoor thermal comfort. Experimental results show that the solar heating system can con-
vert about 50% of the received solar radiation for space heating on a sunny day in winter and increases
indoor temperature by about 10 ◦ C. Compared with direct solar heating mode, solar heating with desic-
cant humidification can increase the fraction of the time within comfort region from about 10% to 20%
for standalone solar heating and from about 30% to 60% for solar heating with auxiliary heater according
to seasonal analysis. It is confirmed that solar heating with desiccant humidification is promising and
worthwhile being applied to improving indoor thermal comfort in heating season.
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
With the increase of occupant comfort demands, heating has
become an important aspect of the growing requirements for air
conditioning. In Germany, more than 50% of the energy consump-
tion of private households is used for space heating and hot water
preparation [1]. According to the report of Archibald [2], two-thirds
of the energy used in buildings and industrial facilities are for
heating needs in the USA. In China, the national annual energy
consumption for heating is about 130 million ton standard coal,
which makes up 10% of the total energy consumption. Therefore,
how to reduce the primary energy consumption without diminish-
ing comfort demand becomes a critical issue. Solar thermal system,
which can provide a substantial part of the energy needed, has
been considered as a potential technology [3]. Over a number of
years, many researches [3–5] have been carried out in the aspects
of experimental investigation, theoretical analysis and practical
application. It has been proved that, under optimal match control,
more than 50% of energy load can be met by solar heating system
[3].
Since people are more sensitive to the variation of tempera-
ture than that of humidity [6,7], existing investigations usually
pay much more attention to indoor temperature control than
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 21 3420 4358; fax: +86 21 3420 6814.
E-mail address: yjdai@sjtu.edu.cn (Y. Dai).
indoor humidity control. This does not mean humidity control is
unimportant. Sensitivity analysis of the indoor thermal comfort
factors performed by Holz et al. [8] suggested that, although
humidity and air velocity play rather small roles in comparison
with other factors like clothing worn by occupants, activity level,
air temperature and mean radiant temperature, they seem to
regulate the sensitivity of the other four factors and are therefore
important. Furthermore, as is know to all, ambient air is usually
much dry in cold weather, and thus when fresh air from outside is
introduced into conditioned space after being heated, its relative
humidity is mostly lower than 30%, which would impact occupant
comfort and cause respiratory disease [9]. Traditional evaporative
humidification, which has received wild application in humidity
control, would be a considerable solution. Yet, due to the need
for hauling liquid water and the growth of bacteria, mold and
mildew, extensive problems as unhealthy and high maintenance
requirement have been raised [10].
To further improve indoor air quality, desiccant dehumidi-
fication and humidification air-conditioning system is worth of
considering, since it is not only advantageous in cooling and dehu-
midifying the process air in summer, but also can humidify the
process air sufficiently in winter without the assistance of tradi-
tional evaporative humidification unit [10,11]. In addition, it can
be driven by solar energy totally both for dehumidification and for
humidification [12]. However, to the best knowledge of the authors,
while a number of research works have been carried out on desic-
cant dehumidification [13], the subject of desiccant humidification

0378-7788/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.enbuild.2010.08.006
1114 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122

heating with desiccant humidification is performed via typical day

Nomenclature analysis and seasonal analysis.

Asc area of solar collectors, m2

ca specific heat of air, kJ/(kg K) 2. System description
d humidity ratio, g/kg
fcomfort fraction of data points within the comfort region, % 2.1. System configuration
fsc solar fraction, %
ftemp fraction of data points within the qualified region of Fig. 1 illustrates the schematic diagram of the installed solar air-
temperature, % conditioning system. As seen, the system generally consists of two
I solar insolation density, W/m2 subsystems, namely, solar thermal subsystem (solar collectors) and
ma mass flow rate of air, kg/h desiccant air-conditioning subsystem (desiccant wheel). While the
Qrad received solar radiation, kW former is used for heating air to required temperature (1 → 2), the
Qsc collected solar energy, kW later is used for humidifying air to comfort state (2 → 3/4 → 5).
t measured temperature, ◦ C In the system, solar heating has been recognized as an effective
T temperature, ◦ C way to provide a substantial part of the energy needed for heating
requirement and improving indoor air quality. Since it overcomes
Greek symbols the drawback of conversion losses that often associates with con-
d humidity ratio difference, ventional heating sources and consumes only small quantity of
g/kg primary energy (electricity for air transmission, etc.), solar heating
T temperature difference, ◦ C is energy-efficient and environment-friendly.
sc efficiency of the solar collecting subsystem To humidify the hot air, a developed one-rotor two-stage DAU
is incorporated. Fig. 1 illustrates the basic operating principle of
Subscripts rotary desiccant humidification schematically. As seen, the cross-
a air section of the rotor is divided into four parts: two for humidification
amb ambient (sections I and II) and the others for dehumidification (sections III
comfort comfort and IV), with a central angle of 45◦ and 135◦ for humidification and
indoor indoor dehumidification respectively. When the wheel constantly rotates
mI mode I through the separate sections, the cold humid air (state 6) is dried
mII mode II by the desiccant due to the adsorption effect of the desiccant mate-
rad radiation rial in sections III and IV. At the same time, the hot dry air (state 2)
sc solar collector is humidified by desorbing the water from the desiccant in sections
sup supply I and II. Similar to desiccant dehumidification, desiccant humidifi-
temp temperature cation is also a near isenthalpic procedure, namely, it only converts
1–8 state points sensible heat to latent heat without any heat consumption and pro-
duction. The main difference lies in that, while the former utilizes
solar heated air as regeneration air and dehumidifies process air
to remove latent heat load, the latter adopts solar heated air as
has received few investigations, especially when solar heating is process air and humidifies the air to solve the dry indoor environ-
taken into account. ment. In comparison with traditional evaporative humidification,
In this paper, a solar heating and humidification system, which it is advantageous in providing more comfortable and healthier air
adopts evacuated tube solar air collector and incorporates a devel- due to the absence of liquid water.
oped one-rotor two-stage desiccant air-conditioning unit (DAU), Considering that the much dry and cold condition of ambi-
is introduced. The system has been installed in an office build- ent air would limit the humidification capacity of the system and
ing at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). The objective of this lead to high heat losses, return air from the conditioned space
study is to check the applicability of solar heating and evaluate the (state 6) is adopted as cold air in the studied system. Actually,
feasibility and potential of desiccant humidification for improving this is a heat recovery process due to the reuse of indoor mois-
indoor thermal comfort. On the basis of experimental investigation, ture (latent heat). Besides, it should be pointed out that, the
a simulation model of the system is developed, using the TRN- desiccant air-conditioning subsystem, which adopts the novel one-
SYS package. Comparison between direct solar heating and solar rotor two-stage configuration, is primarily configured to meet the

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the solar heating system.

 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122
Fig. 2. Photos of the solar air-conditioning system installed at SJTU, China.
cooling requirement of the space in summer. The system can
be used for dehumidification in summer and humidification in
winter. Since this paper is prepared to introduce the solar heat-
ing and humidification performance of the system, we would
not go into details about the one-rotor two-stage DAU here, but
focus on its humidification performance. Detailed information
about the one-rotor two-stage DAU can be found in the paper by
Ge et al. [14].
Specifically, the system under consideration is designed to be
an air-conditioning device for a room of 23.2 m2 of a building at
SJTU, Shanghai, China, as shown in Fig. 2. The summer there is
hot and humid, and the winter is cold and dry. The conditioned
room is south-facing, with two exterior windows and three exterior
non-insulated walls, and the solar air-conditioning unit is installed
beside the room. The lighting and equipment include a lamp and
a computer. During the test period, 2 people stayed inside, with-
out any regular heating system. According to the heating load
(2.5 kW) of the conditioned room under typical local condition,
the solar collector area was set as 15 m2 . To realize perfect inte-
gration of solar collectors and building, solar air collectors were
adopted and mounted on an existing concrete structure roof. The
arrangement of solar collector array is illustrated in Fig. 2. As can
be seen, the solar collectors were integrated into three modules.
Considering that solar air collector is merely efficient in collecting
heat within the low temperature range, two-stage heat collect-
ing design is adopted, namely, ambient air is first preheated in
a module and then the air is divided into two parts, which flow
ahead in parallel through the other modules separately. Due to
the air flow rates in the second stage are reduced, correspond-
ing outlet temperature of the air will be increased greatly. This
kind of arrangement guarantees high system performance and
good operation stability. Table 1 lists the main parameters of the
system.
Table 1
Main geometrical and operating parameters of the solar air-conditioning system.
Solar thermal subsystem
Area of solar air collector: 15 m2 Maximum flow rate of hot air:
340 m3 /h
Desiccant air-conditioning subsystem
Desiccant: composite silica-gel Maximum flow rate of hot air:
340 m3 /h
Diameter of desiccant wheel: 550 mm Maximum flow rate of cold air:
340 m3 /h
Thickness of desiccant wheel: 100 mm Power of motor for desiccant
wheel: 120 W
Rotation speed of desiccant wheel: 8 r/h
1115
2.2. System operation
As illustrated in Fig. 1, there exists two hot air paths (1 → 2 and
1 → 2 → 3/4 → 5) and one cold air path (6 → 7 → 8). The cold air
(state 6) is dehumidified twice by passing through sections III and
IV in tandem. Depending on whether the hot air is humidified, the
solar heating system can work in two different modes:
• Mode I: direct solar heating mode. Valve 1 is opened and valve
2 is closed; after the solar collector, the process air is supplied
to room directly (state 2). Under this mode, the desiccant DAU is
switched off and the return air (state 6) is exhausted to ambient
environment.
• Mode II: solar heating with desiccant humidification mode. Valve
2 is opened and valve 1 is closed; except being heated in the
collector (from states 1 to 2), the process air is further humidified
in the desiccant wheel (from states 2 to 5). Under this mode, the
desiccant DAU is switched on and the return air (state 6), of which
the humidity ratio is relative higher than that of the process air
(state 2), is reused to humidify the process air (state 2) to a more
comfort state (state 5).
2.3. Data acquisition and control system
An inverter-driven supply blower is adopted to adjust the
amount of outdoor air that is heated in the solar collector array
and delivered to the occupied space. The DAU is controlled by
a PLC system, through which the key components, such as des-
iccant wheel and fans, can operate automatically. To check the
performance of the system, the temperature and humidity ratio
of air streams were measured by PT100 RTDs and a series of
thermo-hygrometers, the air flow rate was obtained by adopting
a thermoelectric anemoscope and the solar radiant intensity was
inspected via a radiometer. Table 2 gives the main characteristics
of these measuring devices. Here, thermo-hygrometer is a kind
of instrumentation that can be used for measuring temperature
and humidity ratio simultaneously; thermoelectric anemoscope
is a wind speed detecting device based on digital temperature
sensor. Measurement locations in the solar collecting and humidi-
fication system are depicted in Fig. 1. A one-time measurement was
performed to determine the air flow rate at the beginning of exper-
imental work. Six thermo-hygrometers were used and arranged
uniformly to monitor the indoor temperature and humidity ratio.
According to the test results, the temperature difference among
different locations is acceptable, within about 3 ◦ C.
3. Performance indexes
The heating capacity of the solar system is evaluated by the ther-
mal energy provided by the air passing through the solar collector
array:
Qsc = ca ma (T2 − T1 ) (1)
The efficiency of the solar collecting subsystem is evaluated by the
ratio of the collected thermal energy to the received solar radiation:
Qsc ca ma (T2 − T1 )
sc = = (2)
Qrad IAsc
Besides, the solar heating characteristics of the system are eval-
uated by temperature difference between indoor and ambient
environment T, and increment in humidity ratio d under mode
II:
T = Tindoor − Tamb (3)
d = dsup,mII − dsup,mI (4)
1116 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122

Table 2
Specification of the test instrumentation.

Measurement Sensors Operational range Accuracy

◦
Temperature PT100 RTD −200 to 500 C ±0.15 ◦ C or ±0.002|t| ◦ C
Thermo-hygrometer −10 to 60 ◦ C ±0.5 ◦ C

Humidity ratio Thermo-hygrometer 10–100% RH ±2% RH

Air flow Thermoelectric anemoscope 0–50 m/s 0.015 m/s
Solar radiant intensity Radiometer 0–2000 W/m2 ±2%

Note: The accuracy of PT100 is ±0.15 ◦ C when 0.002|t|<0.15 and is ±0.002|t| ◦ C when 0.002|t|>0.15; here, t is the measured temperature.

Table 3
Performance summary of direct solar heating.

I (W/m2 ) Tamb (◦ C) Tindoor (◦ C) T (◦ C) Qsc (W) sc

Low radiant intensity 350 7.4 15.9 8.5 2612 0.49

High radiant intensity 601 9.8 21.8 12.0 4407 0.48

4. Experimental investigation
The solar air-conditioning system has been operated since Octo-
ber 2008 and numerous experimental runs have been carried out.
From 14th November 2008 to 14th March 2009, the solar heating
performance of the system were monitored and investigated.
In order to present the performance of the system, data for
mode I recorded on 16th, January, 2009 and 14th, March, 2009,
which represent typical day of low radiant intensity (daily average
350 W/m2 ) and high radiant intensity (daily average 601 W/m2 )
respectively, and data recorded on 20th, November, 2008 for mode
II, which operates under typical low ambient humidity ratio (daily
average 3.0 g/kg), were selected and discussed in details in this
section. The air flow rate through the solar collector array was
kept constant (202 m3 /h) during tests to maintain the reliability
and simplify the operation. To preheat the conditioned space, the
solar heating system was switched on about 1 h before business
hours.
4.1. Direct solar heating
Fig. 3 depicts the performance of the solar heating system under
direct solar heating mode. As can be seen, compared with the
temperature of the ambient, the indoor temperature is increased
significantly, up to 18.9 ◦ C under low radiant intensity and 23.7 ◦ C
under high radiant intensity. By averaging the recorded data, it is
found that, the heating capacity of the system is reliable and has
reached the design value 2.5 kW, even under low radiant intensity,
as listed in Table 3. With the ability of increasing indoor temper-
ature by about 10 ◦ C and a solar collecting efficiency of near 0.5,
the solar heating system is proved to be applicable to local weather
condition.
4.2. Solar heating with desiccant humidification
The performance of the solar heating system under solar heat-
ing with desiccant humidification mode is illustrated in Fig. 4. The
area in the dashed lines characterizes the comfort region (16–24 ◦ C,
30–60% RH) for heating season according to china standard GB/T
18883-2003 [15]. It is seen that, not only the indoor temperature
but also the indoor humidity ratio is increased greatly, as shown in
Fig. 4(a). As a result, the indoor condition is generally kept within
the comfort region, as demonstrated in Fig. 4(b).
To find out the effect of desiccant humidification, comparisons
between mode I and mode II were performed by taking the air state
point 2 (after the solar collector, at the inlet of the DAU) and 5 (after
the desiccant wheel, at the outlet of the DAU) as the supply state of
mode I and mode II respectively. Fig. 5 shows the variations of solar
radiant intensity I, temperature of supply air under mode I Tsup,mI
and mode II Tsup,mII , humidity ratio of supply air under mode I dsup,mI
and mode II dsup,mII , and corresponding humidly ratio difference d.
As desiccant humidification process is close to an isenthalpic
procedure, on the one hand, the temperature of supply air under
mode II is lower than that of mode I, as can be seen from Fig. 5(a),
on the other hand, the humidity ratio of supply air under mode II
is higher than that of mode I, as shown in Fig. 5(b). It should be
pointed out that, in practical application, the incorporation of DAU
usually increases the length of air duct and thus raises air leakage
and heat loss. Therefore, after being humidified, the enthalpy of
process air is actually a bit lower than that without humidification.

Fig. 3. The performance of the solar heating system under mode I.

 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122 1117

Fig. 4. The performance of the solar heating system under mode II; the area in the dashed lines characterizes the comfort region according to china standard GB/T 18883-2002
[15].

Fig. 5. Comparison between mode I and mode II.

Fig. 6. The indoor thermal environment under mode I on 16th, January, 2009.

Fig. 7. The indoor thermal environment under mode I on 14th March, 2009.
1118 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122

Table 4
Specific assumptions used in the simulation.

Item Factor

Building heat load

Enclosure (1) The conditioned area is modeled as a single zone, with the lumped-capacitance single-zone building model (Type 88)
(2) Building surface area and building volume are of the same as the conditioned room, namely, 83.24 m2 and 72 m3
(3) Considering the room is on the rooftop with two exterior widows and three exterior non-insulated walls, the building loss
coefficient is assumed to be 7 kJ/(h m2 K)
Lighting 72 kJ/h
Equipment 540 kJ/h
People 2 people occupy the space during business hours (8 a.m. until 5 p.m.), leading to rate of sensible heating gain from people
576 kJ/h and rate of humidity gain 0.058 kg/h

Solar air-conditioning system

Solar air collector (1) The performance of the solar air collectors is characterized by  = 0.75–2.39(Tave − Tamb )/I, which is developed on the basis
of standalone test (flow rate at test conditions is 0.0169 kg/(m2 s) and the slope of the collectors is 0◦ )
(2) The IAMs are based on the default values in the Type 71 TRNSYS solar collector model
Desiccant wheel The similar mathematical model of desiccant wheel, which has been developed in our earlier work [17], is used in present
study
Auxiliary heater An auxiliary heater (Type 6), with maximum heating rate of 3 kW, is adopted
Control (1) Control of solar heat collection is achieved by switching the solar collector on at 7 a.m. (1 h before business hours, in order
strat- that the space could be preheated) and off at 5 p.m.
egy (2) For standalone solar heating system (without auxiliary heater), the auxiliary heater is kept off
(3) For auxiliary heater coupled solar heating system, the operation of the auxiliary heater is controlled based on the set point
temperature in Type 6 (e.g. if the set point temperature is set at 60 ◦ C, the heater will be switched on when the temperature of
inlet air is lower than 60 ◦ C, with a maximum outlet temperature of 60 ◦ C.)

However, the significant increment in humidity ratio indicates that
solar heating with desiccant humidification does have the potential
for solving the dry indoor conditions in winter.
4.3. Discussion
For the purpose of evaluating the performance of the solar heat-
ing system more comprehensively, indoor thermal environment
under direct solar heating mode is also depicted in psychrometric
chart, as shown in Figs. 6 and 7.
It can be seen that, while about one-third of data points are
within the comfort region under the condition with relative high
humidity ratio, as illustrated in Fig. 7, the indoor thermal environ-
ment is almost totally out of the comfort region under the condition
of low humid, as shown in Fig. 6. Moreover, although temperature
control could further improve the indoor thermal environment, it
only works in high humid weather (Fig. 7); in low humid weather
condition, temperature control has few effects on indoor environ-
ment improvement (Fig. 6). Compared with mode I, the indoor
thermal environment of mode II is much better, as mentioned in
Section 4.2 and shown in Fig. 4. Besides, if temperature control is
applied to mode II, the indoor environment would be totally kept
within the comfort region.
Comparison of results with and without desiccant humidifi-
cation suggests that the mode of solar heating with desiccant
humidification is of great benefit to improving indoor thermal com-
fort. However, the increment in humidity ratio is realized at the
expense of sensible heat and thus would lead to more require-
ments in solar collector area. Therefore, a tradeoff between thermal
comfort improvement and collector area requirement should be
achieved in practical application.
tion conditions are set as the same as those mentioned in previous
section unless specially stated.
Different from the installed system, an auxiliary heater is
adopted in the model. In this case, continuous operation would be
realized even in rainy and cloudy weather and more useful results
as solar fraction would be obtained for practical system design and
optimization. Since the objective of this work is to evaluate the fea-
sibility of the desiccant humidification technology for humidifying
the process air and solving the dry indoor environment in winter,
simple control strategy is adopted here, as given in Table 4.
The model was validated using the experimental data moni-
tored on 20th November, 2008. As illustrated in Fig. 8, the predicted
results in terms of the outlet temperature and humidity ratio of the
air after the DAU (state 5) agree with the experimental data rea-
sonably. The mean deviations of temperature and humidity ratio
are 6.0% and 4.2% respectively.
5.1. Typical day analysis
Considering that, for solar driven system, standalone operation
(without auxiliary heater) usually occurs on typical sunny days and
days with better weather condition, typical day analysis is carried
out to obtain useful data for solar thermal system design in this sec-

5. Theoretical analysis

In this section, a model of the solar heating and humidification

system is created in TRNSYS 16 simulation studio [16] to com-
pare the performance of mode I and mode II under same ambient
conditions and evaluate the potential of desiccant humidification
for improving indoor thermal comfort. Specific assumptions and
design parameters, which are based on the installed experimental
setup and the monitored results, are listed in Table 4. Other calcula- Fig. 8. Comparison between the experimental and numerical results.
 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122
Fig. 9. Indoor air conditions: (a) mode I; (b) mode II (Asc = 15 m2 ).
tion. A typical sunny day, 4th January of the typical meteorological
year (TMY), with average ambient condition of 360.3 W/m2 , 7.3 ◦ C
and 3.6 g/kg during business hours, is studied.
5.1.1. Effect of desiccant humidification
Fig. 9 shows the indoor air conditions when the system is oper-
ated under direct solar heating mode (mode I) and solar heating
with desiccant humidification mode (mode II). As seen in Fig. 9(a),
under mode I, although lots of data points are within 16–24 ◦ C, only
a few remain in the comfort region when relative humidity is con-
sidered. In comparison with mode I, the indoor humidity ratio of
mode II is increased significantly, thereby leading to much better
indoor thermal environment, as shown in Fig. 7(b). It is suggested
that the effect of desiccant humidification on improving indoor
thermal comfort is favorable.
To quantify the improvement in indoor thermal comfort, frac-
tion of data points (here, data points represent business time)
within the comfort region (fcomfort ), namely, the ratio of data points
within the comfort region to all the data points, is defined. Besides,
fraction of data points within the qualified region of temperature
(16–24 ◦ C) (ftemp ) is also studied. This index will be helpful to reveal-
ing the decrement in temperature of mode II. Fig. 10 illustrates the
variation of the two indexes corresponding to Fig. 9. Obviously, it
represents the effect of desiccant humidification much more visu-
ally. With slight decrease in ftemp , fcomfort is increased greatly from
10.4% to 52.6% under mode II.
5.1.2. Effect of solar collector area
As mentioned in Sections 4.2 and 4.3, when desiccant humidi-
fication is incorporated, indoor humidity ratio increases, whereas
indoor temperature decreases. For the purpose of achieving a trade-
Fig. 10. Effect of desiccant humidification (Asc = 15 m2 ).
1119
off between thermal comfort improvement and solar collector
requirement, the effect of solar collector area on thermal comfort
is studied. The results are illustrated in Fig. 11.
It can be found that: (1) daily average indoor temperature
Tindoor,ave increases with solar collector area Asc and the daily aver-
age indoor temperature of mode II is always lower than that of
mode I; (2) due to the fact that, with the increase of the solar col-
lector area, indoor temperature is heated above 16 ◦ C (entering the
qualified region) at first and then over 24 ◦ C (leaving the quali-
fied region), ftemp increases with solar collector area at first and
then decreases with further increase in solar collector area; (3) the
variation of fcomfort is similar to ftemp in tendency due to the same
reason aforementioned; (4) the optimal solar collector area is about
12–15 m2 (high ftemp ) for mode I and 15–18 m2 for mode II (ensuring
both high ftemp and high fcomfort ); (5) desiccant humidification can
improve indoor thermal comfort significantly with a slight decrease
in temperature level, as demonstrated in Fig. 11(c) and (b). These
suggest that the increase of solar collector area caused by desiccant
humidification is acceptable.
5.2. Seasonal performance analysis
Due to the variation of weather condition, the solar radiant
intensity would be bad, especially, for the case of cloudy, rainy
and snowy weather. Therefore, the feasibility of the studied sys-
tem is further evaluated seasonally. Both standalone solar heating
and solar heating with auxiliary heater are performed.
5.2.1. Standalone solar heating
Fig. 12 shows the seasonal performance of standalone solar
heating. The tendency of the results is of the same as that of the
discussed typical day, namely, while ftemp of mode II is lower than
that of mode I, fcomfort of mode II is higher. However, it should be
noted that both ftemp and fcomfort are very low, with seasonal ftemp of
mode I about 25% and seasonal fcomfort of mode II about 20%. More-
over, it is found that January, as the coldest and driest month, has
the lowest ftemp and fcomfort . Further investigation on solar collec-
tor area (Fig. 13, under mode II) suggests that increase in collector
area can elevate ftemp to some degree, but influences fcomfort slightly.
This can be explained by that: on the one hand, for typical sunny
weather, 15 m2 is approximate the optimal value of solar collector
area, as demonstrated in Fig. 11(c); on the other hand, for rainy
and cloudy weather, with the increase of solar collector area, the
temperature and humidity ratio could be increased, but would be
still out the comfort region. The results indicate that: (1) the area of
solar collector should better be designed under typical sunny day;
(2) the integration of auxiliary heater is necessary to overcome the
obstacle of bad weather and achieve better seasonal performance.
1120 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122

Fig. 11. Tradeoff between thermal comfort improvement and collector area requirement.

Fig. 12. Seasonal performance of standalone solar heating (Asc = 15 m2 ).

5.2.2. Solar heating with auxiliary heater mode I, ftemp reaches a maximum value at the setpoint temperature
As a key parameter of auxiliary heater, the effect of setpoint of 60 ◦ C, with a relative high fcomfort ; under mode II, both fcomfort
temperature on seasonal performance is first investigated. Fig. 14 and ftemp reach maximum at the setpoint temperature of 70 ◦ C. This
depicts the variations of ftemp and fcomfort . It can be seen that, under means that the optimal setpoint temperature for mode I and mode

Fig. 13. Effect of solar collector area on seasonal performance (mode II).
 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122 1121

Fig. 14. Effect of setpoint temperature on seasonal performance (Asc = 15 m2 ).

Fig. 15. Seasonal performance of solar heating with auxiliary heater (Asc = 15 m2 ).

II are respectively 60 and 70 ◦ C. In view of this, in the following
sections, the setpoint temperature is set at 60 ◦ C for mode I and
70 ◦ C for mode II.
Fig. 15 illustrates the seasonal performance of solar heating with
auxiliary heater in detail. The results demonstrate that both ftemp
and fcomfort are increased greatly in comparison with standalone
solar heating (Fig. 12), with seasonal average ftemp of about 70%
and 65%, and fcomfort of about 30% and 60% for mode I and mode
II respectively. It is confirmed that the incorporation of auxiliary
heater is indeed beneficial to improving seasonal performance.
Moreover, it is obvious that the potential of desiccant humidi-
fication for improving indoor thermal comfort is also proved to
be favorable, with seasonal fcomfort being increased from about
30% to 60%.
5.2.3. Energy analysis
Based on Section 5.2.2, energy performance of the solar heat-
ing system is analyzed. Solar fraction (fsc ), namely, the ratio of the
heating capacity contributed by solar energy to the total heating
capacity of the hybrid system, is used to evaluate the energy char-
acteristics of the system.
Fig. 16 shows the monthly and seasonal heating consumption.
With the solar collector area used being of the same, the collected
solar energy is constant under the two modes. Yet, the heating con-
sumption is increased by about 10% under mode II compared with
mode I due to the relative higher setpoint temperature. Addition-
ally, considering that the seasonal average ftemp of mode I (about
70%) is relative higher than that of mode II (about 65%), as shown
in Fig. 15(a), mode I would be more suitable for conditioning space
without comfort requirement.

Fig. 16. Heating consumption of solar heating with auxiliary heater (Asc = 15 m2 ). Fig. 17. Solar fraction of solar heating with auxiliary heater (Asc = 15 m2 ).
1122 D. La et al. / Energy and Buildings 43 (2011) 1113–1122
However, it should be noted that, although more energy is con-
sumed under mode II, indoor thermal comfort can be improved
significantly, with seasonal fcomfort being increased from about 30%
to 60%, as mentioned in Section 5.2.2. Actually, if comparison is
performed between mode II and solar heating with traditional
humidification as evaporative humidification, the energy con-
sumption increment will be eliminated, due to both desiccant
humidification and evaporative humidification are near isen-
thalpic. In this case, there would be no increase in area requirement
to some degree. Besides, the absence of water will be an additional
benefit. By all counts, mode II is suggested to be promising and
worthwhile being applied to space with comfort requirement.
The solar fraction of the system is sounded, as illustrated in
Fig. 17. The seasonal solar fraction is about 53% and 48% for mode I
and mode II respectively.
6. Conclusions
By combining a series of solar air collectors and a recently
developed one-rotor two-stage desiccant unit together, a solar
heating and humidification system was built. Its performance was
monitored, presented and discussed. On the basis of the installed
experimental setup, a simulation model was created in TRNSYS
simulation studio. Detailed theoretical analysis was performed. The
main findings of this investigation are as follows:
(1) The studied solar heating system can condition the space to
favorable state, with a temperature increment about 10 ◦ C and
a solar collecting efficiency about 50%. Theses suggest that solar
heating is applicable to local weather condition.
(2) Compared with direct solar heating system, solar heating with
desiccant humidification can improve indoor thermal comfort
significantly. According to seasonal analysis, the fraction of the
time within comfort region is increased from about 10% to 20%
for standalone solar heating and from about 30% to 60% for solar
heating with auxiliary heater.
(3) The increase of solar collector area raised by desiccant humid-
ification is acceptable in comparison with the significant
improvement in thermal comfort. To achieve the best indoor
environment, the optimal solar collector area of the studied sys-
tem is 12–15 m2 for direct solar heating mode and 15–18 m2 for
solar heating with desiccant humidification mode.
(4) Auxiliary heater, which can improve indoor thermal comfort
greatly (from about 10% to 30% for direct solar heating mode
and from about 20% to 60% for solar heating with desiccant
humidification mode), is advised to be incorporated in practical
implementation.
(5) Energy analysis suggests that, while solar heating with desic-
cant humidification mode is advantageous in improving indoor
thermal environment and is much suitable for space with
comfort requirement, direct solar heating mode is more energy-
efficient, and for the space without comfort requirement, the
later is preferable.
In conclusion, solar heating with desiccant humidification is
proved to be a promising technology for improving indoor thermal
comfort in winter. Due to the absence of liquid water, desiccant
humidification is more considerable than traditional evaporative
humidification to some degree.
Acknowledgement
This work was supported by the State Key Science and Tech-
nologies Program under the contract no. 2008BAJ12B01.
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