Photovoltaic–electrodialysis regeneration method for liquid desiccant cooling system

Liquid desiccant cooling system (LDCS) is an (a novel) air-conditioning system with good energy saving potential. Regenerator is the power centre for LDCS. Currently, the regeneration process is always fuelled by thermal energy. Nevertheless, this regeneration pattern has some disadvantages in that its performance will become poor when the surrounding atmosphere is of high humidity, and the heat provided for regeneration will be unfavourable to the following dehumidification process. To ameliorate that, a new regeneration method is proposed in this paper: a membrane regenerator is employed to regenerate the liquid desiccant in an electrodialysis way; while solar photovoltaic generator is adopted to supply electric power for this process. Analysis has been made about this new regeneration method and the result reveals: this new manner achieves good stability with the immunity against the adverse impact from the outside high humidity; its performance is much higher than that of the thermal regeneration manner while putting aside the low efficiency of the photovoltaic system. Besides, purified water can be obtained in company with the regeneration process.