Three years experimental comparative analysis of a desiccant based air conditioning system for a flower greenhouse: Assessment of different desiccants

This paper presents three years experimental comparative analysis of a desiccant-based and a traditional air conditioning system for a flower greenhouse in the winter season. Two identical neighbouring flower greenhouses were equipped with a traditional and an innovative air conditioning system respectively. The innovative air conditioning system is based on the Ventilated Latent Heat Converter (VLHC) AGAM 1020 that consists of a dehumidification and a regeneration unit. Heat recovery is performed on the desiccant regeneration process to warm up the dehumidified air coming back into the greenhouse. Comparative analysis was carried out for three years using three different desiccants in the VLHC: H2O/LiCl in 2010, H2O/KCOOH in 2011 and H2O/LiBr in 2012. The greenhouse equipped with a sorption unit exhibits an energy saving of 9.6% in 2010, 11.7% in 2011, and 15.1% energy saving in 2012. The comparative analysis gives the opportunity for the assessment of the hygroscopic salt solutions currently used as desiccants. Although H2O/LiBr desiccant exhibits the best performance, the solution H2O/KCOOH seems to be very promising as “desiccant of the future”. •This paper presents a three years experimental comparative analysis.•Three different desiccants were tested: H2O/LiCl, H2O/KCOOH, H2O/LiBr.•The desiccant-based system exhibits a primary energy saving from 9.6% to 15.1%.•H2O/KCOOH seems to be very promising as “desiccant of the future”.