application of liquid desiccants for cooling!!!

[Redbearded]

Looking at this new video and seeing some amazing possibilities for van/rv/trailer builds once it's made smaller  
Especially if you use solar thermal for the desiccant drying stage would lead to a very low electrical/power requirement.

 

[lenny flank]

Color me skeptical. Simple thermodynamics means that it will always be energy-intensive to remove heat from the air and dump it elsewhere.

 

[MrNoodly]

By the time it's made small enough for a vehicle (still leaving enough living space) would it provide enough cooling? Mmmmm, I doubt it.

 

[Redbearded]

True, but where that energy come from makes a huge difference. For cooling, heat is always just being moved around and the COP makes a huge difference which they are saying is being doubled in certain contexts. Plus if I can dry the desiccant with solar thermal power which does not take the ~80% efficiency loss compared to solar electric and not have to carry some other heat source like propane (i.e propane fridges) it could be a gamechanger for lower power Air Conditioning while mobile. There are lots of issues to address, (biofouling, corrosion, packaging, etc)

 

[Redbearded]

A paper discussing these kinds of systems
http://six6.region-stuttgart.de/sixcms/media.php/773/19_Conde_M.pdf
http://ailr.com/liquid-desiccant/ld-tutorial/

 

[Gypsy Freedom]

while technically you could build a large enough system to have functional cooling. it is a very complicated and intricate elaboration on a basic swamp cooler. the only difference is they are basically running 2 swamp coolers in a series/parallel configuration. one dehumidifies the air feeding the other. you still have to deal with the humidity generated in some way and it takes energy and cool air to get that done. i would not hold my breath on a consumer residential (let alone mobile rv size) system any time in the near future

you could do better by just running the cool humid air from a swamp cooler through an air to air heat exchanger and then dumping the warm moist air back outside. way simpler

niether one will work well in a naturally high humidity environment like florida

 

[lenny flank]

I remain skeptical.

The laws of physics are the same for everyone. If there were an efficient and effective low-energy way to cool a room, everyone and his brother would already be using it.

 

[MrNoodly]

And here's the other thing. One reason I became a nomad was to get away the mechanical complexity and maintenance requirements of a house. A system like this would just be inviting all that back into my life. It's much simpler to just avoid places that would require air conditioning. When that isn't possible I pretend I'm back in my childhood when we didn't have air conditioning.