Parametric and Performance Investigations on Novel Multipurpose Liquid Desiccant Drying/Desalination System

Abstract

In humid climates, due to high relative humidity present in the ambient air, traditional air drying system is becoming inefficient for drying the agricultural/food products. On the other hand, there is a scarcity of useful drinking water in many parts of the world. In order to meet the aforementioned requirements, a novel multipurpose liquid desiccant drying/desalination system has been proposed in the present study by replacing water as a working fluid instead of air in the liquid desiccant regenerator and by adding an energy efficient heat exchanger to the conventional liquid desiccant air conditioning system. A thermal model has been developed for assessing the performance of the novel system and for comparing the performance of the novel system with conventional system. Using the developed model, parametric studies on novel and conventional systems are carried out by choosing the system efficiency as a performance criterion and Lithium chloride as a liquid desiccant. From the parametric studies and performance comparison analysis, it is observed that novel system efficiency is 20.8% higher than the conventional system and the amount of pure water extracted from the novel system is observed to be 4.3 l/min as a byproduct.

Additional information

Funding

First author acknowledges the funding support provided by the Center for Cooperation in Science & Technology among Developing Societies (CCSTDS) for attending the International Conference on Polygeneration (ICP–2019) held at Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan (Grant Id: DO\Lr.\TF–I\2019-20).

Notes on contributors

Bukke Kiran Naik

Bukke Kiran Naik received both his Ph.D. (2019) and M-Tech (2014) in mechanical engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati. He received his B-Tech in Mechanical Engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University (JNTU) Anantapur in 2012. Currently, he is working as a Queen Elizabeth Postdoctoral fellow at Simon Fraser University, Canada. He is the recipient of Queen Elizabeth Scholars (QES) Fellowship from Universities Canada, Center for Cooperation in Science & Technology among Developing Societies (CCSTDS) Travel fellowship from INSA/CSIR/DAE-BRNS-CCSTDS and SERB-ITS travel grant from Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India. He has about 30 research articles in various international journals and conference proceedings. His research experience includes numerical and experimental investigations on energy efficient systems, design and performance optimization of thermal systems and developing novel materials for thermochemical heat storage applications.

Palanisamy Muthukumar

Palanisamy Muthukumar received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from IIT Madras during 2005. He joined the IIT Guwahati as an assistant professor in January 2006 and he became professor in January 2015. He received DAAD research fellowships for visiting IKE, University of Stuttgart, Germany, during September–December 2000, June–July 2008, June–July 2010, and July 2012. He is the recipient of the Fulbright-Nehru Academic & Professional Excellence Award (Teaching & Research) in 2017 from US – Indo Educational Forum (USIEF), BASE Fellowship from Indo - U.S. Science and Technology Forum in 2014 and the IEI Young Engineer Award–2010 in Mechanical Engineering from the Institute of Engineers (India). He is a reviewer for many international journals in the areas of hydrogen energy, energy storage, refrigeration, and heat transfer. He has published more than 240 research articles in various international journals and conference proceedings. His areas of interest are hydrogen energy storage, metal hydride-based thermal machines, thermal energy storage, coupled heat and mass transfer in porous medium, porous medium combustion, and sorption heating and cooling systems.