Performance investigation of solar assisted desiccant integrated Maisotsenko cycle cooler in subtropical climate conditions

Air conditioning has become an integral part of buildings due to climate change and global warming. About 40% of the world energy is being consumed by the building sector, with around 50% share of HVAC applications. In the current study, the simulation-based performance of solar desiccant integrated Maisotsenko cycle cooling system is analyzed in subtropical climate conditions. Initially, an office building model is developed in TRNBuild to generate hourly dynamic year around air-conditioning loads. Afterwards a simulation model of the SDI-MC is developed for maximum cooling capacity of 24 kW in TRNSYS and validated with experimental data. Additionally, an effective control strategy is also implemented to efficiently meet the air-conditioning demand. The main performance parameters include COP, cooling capacity, useful energy gain, efficiency of solar water heating system, auxiliary energy share, and solar fraction of the system. The result revealed that the COP of the system ranges from 0.78 to 1.13 due to variation in system inlet humidity and temperature. Regeneration temperature requirement varies from 60 °C to 78 °C while cooling capacity of system ranges from 8 KW to 24 KW. Similarly, the results revealed an average annual efficiency of evacuated tube solar thermal collectors around 35.80% with total annual energy gain of 113.96 MJ. Furthermore, the maximum annual auxiliary energy share required for regeneration is 12.5%.