A novel heat recovery/desiccant cooling system

The global air temperature has increased by 0.74± 0.18 °C since 1905 and scientists have shown that CO2 accounts for 55 percentages of the greenhouse gases. Global atmospheric CO2 has been sharply increased since 1751, however the trend has slowed down in last fifty years in the Western Europe. UK and EU countries have singed the Kyoto agreement to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by a collective average of 12.5% below their 1990 levels by 2020. In the EU, 40% of CO2 emission comes from the residential energy consumption, in which the HVAC system accounts for 50%, lighting accounts for 15% and appliances 10%. Hence, reducing the fossil-fuel consumption in residential energy by utilizing renewable energy is an effective method to achieve the Kyoto target. However, in the UK renewable energy only accounts for 2% of the total energy consumption in 2005. A novel heat recovery/desiccant cooling system is driven by the solar collector and cooling tower to achieve low energy cooling with low CO2 emission. This system is novel in the following ways: • Uses cheap fibre materials as the air-to-air heat exchanger, dehumidifier and regenerator core • Heat/mass fibre exchanger saves both sensible and latent heat from the exhaust air • The dehumidifier core with hexagonal surface could be integrated with windcowls/catchers draught • Utilises low electrical energy and therefore low CO2 is released to the environment The cooling system consists of three main parts: heat/mass transfer exchanger, desiccant dehumidifier and regenerator. The fibre exchanger, dehumidifier and regenerator cores are the key parts of the technology. Owing to its proper pore size and porosity, fibre is selected out as the exchanger membrane to execute the heat/mass transfer process. Although the fibre is soft and difficult to keep the shape for long term running, its low price makes its frequent replacement feasible, which can counteract its disadvantages. A counter-flow air-to-air heat /mass exchanger