As discussed in the Liquid Desiccant Tutorial, our water-cooled conditioner uses low-flow liquid-desiccant technology to eliminate carryover of desiccant droplets.  The core of this conditioner is a liquid-to-gas heat exchanger.  The plates of this heat exchanger are made from a plastic extrusion that is 12" wide and 0.1" thick.  The extrusion has internal passages running its length that become cooling channels when the extrusion is assembled into a complete heat exchanger.  As described in our U.S. Patent 6,745,826  and pending foreign patents each plate of the conditioner is attached to an upper and lower end-piece.  When multiple plate/end-piece assemblies are stacked to form a complete conditioner, these end-pieces create a manifold for the coolant. a desiccant distributor and desiccant collection sump.

A 3,000 cfm water-cooled conditioner is shown in the neighboring photograph.  This conditioner is 54" (H) x 25" (W) x 15" (D) and weighs 200 lb. In most applications,  these conditioners are mounted in the LDAC in a double-deep configuration (i.e., the process air passes through two conditioners).  This configuration produces a heat and mass exchanger with very high effectiveness.

The two neighboring graphs show the performance of an LDAC with two conditioners in series on the air flow operating with 43% lithium chloride and cooling water that is 7 F above the ambient wet-bulb temperature.  (The change in desiccant concentration through the conditioner is four points and the rise in cooling water temperature is 10 F.)  At these operating conditions, the LDAC supplies air in the range of 19% to 21% relative humidity and at a temperature that is 3.5 to 5 F above the temperature of the cooling water.  As an example, on a day with outdoor dry-bulb and wet-bulb temperatures equal to 85 F and 78 F, respectively, the LDAC will supply air at 20.3% rh and 89.1 F (assuming that the conditioner is supplied with cooling water at 85 F).  At these conditions, a 6,000 LDAC provides 30.6 tons of total cooling and 31.7 tons of latent cooling.  The air-side pressure drop through the double-deep conditioner will be about 0.6" w.c.