Paper No 090 – Theoretical Analysis of Mass Transfer in a Vacuum Membrane Dehumidification System – 13th IEA Heat Pump Conference, Jeju, Korea
This paper theoretically investigated the dehumidification performance of a vacuum membrane dehumidification system. Dehumidification effectiveness and the coefficient of performance (COP) were adopted as measures of performance. A one-dimensional numerical model was developed to analyze the mass transfer in a membrane dehumidifier module as a function of variation of four operating parameters: the inlet air temperature, humidity ratio, velocity, and the pressure in the vacuum side. Parametric analysis of the proposed model demonstrated that the inlet air velocity and the pressure in the vacuum side significantly affected dehumidification performance. When the pressure in the vacuum side decreased from 101.3 to 1.0 kPa, the dehumidification effectiveness increased from 2.1 to 54.1 %, while the COP decreased from 23.9 to 1.7. Similarly, the dehumidification effectiveness decreased from 73.9 to 15.8 % and the COP increased from 1.9 to 2.5 with an increase in air velocity from 0.1 to 2.0 m/s. In addition, the energy performance of the proposed vacuum membrane dehumidification system in building application was evaluated by comparing with a conventional cooling coil system.