الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Humid regions suffer from high latent loads. The process air is cooled below its dew point to achieve the required moisture removal level. However, air reheating is needed later to control supply conditions. An indoor swimming pool is one application that requires an air handling unit (AHU) with a high moisture removal ability to satisfy comfortable conditions and protect the construction, particularly in humid regions. In conventional AHUs in such applications, a reheater coil is used to adapt the supply air conditions after the cooling coil, which leads to high energy consumption. In some cases, desiccantwheel-based AHUs in such applications, a rotor packed with solid desiccant is used to dehumidify the supply air while a cooling coil is needed for only sensible cooling. In some cases, an evaporative cooler may be added to the system. This study investigates the feasibility of using a Desiccant Packed Aluminum Foamed Heat Exchanger (DPHE) to cool and dehumidify the process air in a new AHU used for high latent load applications -such as indoor swimming pools- without needing a reheat coil or deep cooling. The proposed AHU uses two fixed DPHEs combined with dampers to switch between the cooling and dehumidification and regeneration modes to provide continuous operation. A numerical investigation is done to test the performance of the two DPHEs, and all psychrometric air processes are introduced under design conditions in the summer of three selected case studies. The first case study compares the performance of the conventional, the desiccant wheel and the proposed systems during the summer season for the city of Alexandria. The second case study compares the performance of the three systems during the summer season in different Egyptian cities. The third case study investigates the feasibility of using the proposed system during summer conditions in other countries. Thermo-economic studies are carried out to compare the conventional and desiccant wheel systems with the proposed system. The numerical model is validated by previously published experimental work. The proposed system proved by results that it could substitute the conventional and the desiccant wheel AHUs. The operational cost can be considerably reduced by 51.8%, 37.5%, and 37.2% when replacing the conventional AHU with the new AHU with DPHEs in the cities of Dammam, Alexandria, and Napoli, respectively. The proposed system can reduce operation costs of desiccant wheel system by 81.2% and 79.7% in the cities of Alexandria, and Napoli, respectively. The proposed system can be applied for other high indoor and outdoor moisture gains applications.