Exergy analysis of a liquid desiccant evaporative cooling system

•The dead state is chosen to guarantee the uniqueness in liquid desiccant evaporative cooling system.•The influence of various parameters on the exergy analysis of the system was analyzed.•The optimal range of the influence parameters of the system is obtained, and the result of the study can guide the operation of the system.•Exergy efficiency indicates the direction of system improvement. In this paper, a model of liquid desiccant evaporative cooling system is presented and simulated. The objective of this paper is to reveal the effects of various parameters on thermodynamic performance and to show the optimal range of those parameters. These results show that the system performance is strongly influenced by the hot water temperature, the flow ratio of air to solution and ambient air relative humidity, followed by the hot water flow rate. And the optimal range of each influencing factor is determined as follows: hot water temperature and the value of ma/ms are adopted to be about 75 °C and 1 kg⋅kg−1 respectively, while hot water flow rate will not be greater than 0.6 kg⋅s−1 and the range of the relative humidity of the atmosphere is wide. The analysis of the exergy efficiency ratio shows that the regenerator (REG), dehumidifier (DEH) and the enthalpy exchanger (EX) in the system are the weak parts of the system.