| Abstract | In addressing global greenhouse gas emissions, contemporary building design emphasizes energy efficiency by reducing indoor thermal loads. Overlooked in this trend is the treatment of indoor latent loads. A heat-pump-driven liquid-desiccant (HPLD) air-conditioning system offers a promising solution, especially in buildings with low sensible heat ratios (SHR). However, prior studies have not adequately simulated prevalent building trends, limiting the performance analysis of HPLD air-conditioning systems to a singular building type. This study estimates the indoor thermal loads of four energy-efficient high-latent-load building types to align with evolving trends. A comparative analysis evaluates the impact on indoor thermal comfort and energy consumption between the conventional vapor compression cooling (reference) and the proposed HPLD systems as building energy efficiency advances. TRNSYS18 software and the effectiveness NTU model are employed for load estimations and system modeling. Simulation results show a reduction in indoor SHR from 0.8 to 0.64 on average in the most energy-efficient building. The proposed system, with decoupled control, ensures consistent indoor thermal comfort across all building types. Achieving equivalent thermal comfort, the proposed system exhibits up to a 33.2% reduction in operating energy compared to the reference system in energy-efficient buildings. The findings suggest that as building energy efficiency improves, the HPLD air-conditioning system with decoupled control, as proposed, can demonstrate greater applicability. |
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