Innovative modeling and simulation of membrane-based dehumidification and energy recovery equipment

Zhiming Gao, Joe Rendall, Kashif Nawaz, Ahmad Abuheiba, Omar Abdelaziz

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Membrane-based dehumidification is a promising solution for building applications because of its low cost and limited energy consumption. Developing an efficient and cost-effective open-source code simulation tool is important for optimizing and evaluating such devices in HVAC applications. This paper describes a physics-based model, which accounts for the fundamental heat and mass transfer between a humid-air vapor stream on the feed side and a flowing stream on the permeate side of a membrane. The developed model comprises two mass transfer submodels—a microstructure model and a performance map model—and adopts a segment-by-segment method for discretizing heat and mass transfer governing equations for flow streams on the feed and permeate sides of a membrane. The model can simulate dehumidifiers and energy recovery ventilators with parallel-flow, cross-flow, and counter-flow configurations, and the predictions compare reasonably well with the measurements. The model was used to evaluate the effect of membrane microstructure parameters and membrane surface deflection factors, as well as to investigate the performance of combined dehumidification and energy recovery exchangers. The model and C++ open-source codes are expected to become a fundamental tool in analyzing future membrane-based dehumidification systems.

Original languageEnglish
Article number102783
JournalCase Studies in Thermal Engineering
Volume43
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 2023

Funding

This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. The United States Government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the United States Government retains a non-exclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, world-wide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for United States Government purposes. The Department of Energy will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ). This project was sponsored by the US Department of Energy's Building Technologies Office and the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program . The authors recognize Brian Johnson and Lacy Aliff of Dais for their assistance and suggestions in our model validation. The authors also appreciate ORNL colleagues for their valuable suggestions and discussions.

Keywords

  • Dehumidification
  • Energy recovery
  • Membrane
  • Modeling
  • Open-source code

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