Design of desiccant wheel for wet bulb temperature control and improvement of cooling tower performance in Ahvaz city

Ahvaz city has variable wet bulb temperature due to its closeness to the Persian Gulf in the Middle East. When the weather gets humid, the wet bulb temperature increases and the performance of cooling towers deteriorates considerably. In this paper for wet bulb temperature control and improve the cooling tower performance in Ahvaz city, a mathematical model is used to predict the outlet air wet bulb temperature of desiccant wheel and the results are compared with the experimental data. Finally, the desiccant wheel effect combined with a heat exchanger on the reduction of inlet air wet bulb temperature into the cooling tower is investigated. It is found that the optimal parameters of desiccant wheel would reduce the inlet air wet bulb temperature into the cooling tower more than 6˚C.