Basic study on the possible application of a thermoelectric module in a liquid desiccant system

Abstract

This study suggests the design of a thermoelectric module (TEM) assisted liquid desiccant (LD) system along with an analysis of the energy potential. The point we focused is the ap-plicability of using a TEM for cooling and heating simultaneously in an LD system. With the proposed design, the TEM takes charge of the cooling and heating loads with a water-cooled unit on the hot side to remove the extra heat rejection. An energy simulation was conducted for different cases to evaluate the primary energy consumption with a variation in the solution temperature. The results show that no energy saving occurs in the current stage; however, there is the possibility of applying TEMs in an LD system to reduce the system size, thereby simplifying the system operation without the use of a refrigerant.