Desiccant-augmented evaporative cooling systems are attracting worldwide attention as an environmentally friendly technology for comfort air conditioning with the added advantages of simple design, robustness, and low electric power consumption. Most of the work reported so far is confined to American Refrigeration Institute (ARI) conditions, which are far from the hot and humid Indian conditions. The feasibility of potential solid desiccant cycles for typical Indian conditions have been analysed. A novel cycle using regenerative evaporative cooling has been proposed. Numerical results for 1% dry-bulb temperature (DBT/coincident wet-bulb temperature (WBT) and 1% WBT/coincident DBT climatic data for summer-monsoon seasons have been obtained in terms of coefficient of performance (COP) and volumetric air flow rate per kilowatt of refrigeration. It was found that the proposed cycle is the best choice for Delhi weather conditions, and further design and developmental work in this direction is being undertaken.

KEYWORDS: year 1995, thermodynamics, desiccants, evaporative cooling, cycles, tropics, subtropics, air conditioning, performance, air flow rate, unit air conditioners, humidity, comparing, heat recovery, coefficient of performance, India.