The following article was published in ASHRAE Journal, August 2002.

Copyright 2002 American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and AirConditioning Engineers, Inc. It is presented for educational purposes only. This article may not be copied and/or distributed electronically or in paper form without permission of ASHRAE.

By Lewis G. Harriman III, Member ASHRAE, and James Judge, P Member ASHRAE .E.,

stant-volume DX cooling unit removes very little moisture although moisture loads remain high. The compressor does not run long enough to make condensed moisture actually drip off the coil and into the drain. This problem can be seen in Figure 1, which shows the measured dehumidification performance of a 3-ton Measured Cooling Coil Performance @ Rated Conditions When the clients goals in(11 kW) cooling unit con10 clude humidity control, as optrolled by temperature alone.1 The compressor operated for posed to humidity moderation, manufacturers offer many only 12 minutes of the 50ON Cycle 5 minute test. When the comnovel dehumidification techMoisture Removal pressor was operating, the coil nologies. This article describes three of these condensed moisture, remov0 products, and suggests some ing it from the air. However, OFF Cycle when the compressor techniques a designer might Moisture Addition switched off, most of that conuse to assess the costs and 5 densed moisture was still on typical performance for dehumidif iers in different clithe coil. Therefore, it reCompressor mates. First, it may be helpful evaporated back into the air to consider why buildings from the coil surface. The 10 0 10 20 30 40 50 units dehumidification caserved by thermostatically Time (min) pacity is then zero. controlled cooling equipment Figure 1: After the compressor shuts off, moisture condensed may have difficulty control- on the cooling coil re-evaporates.1 Hendersons research sugling humidity. gests that until the run-time ume direct expansion (DX) cooling sys- exceeds 40% of each hour, the moisture Ineffective Dehumidification tem only operate for a short portion of removal of a conventional cooling unit In commercial buildings without de- each hour. As soon as the thermostat is is so small as to be negligible.1 humidifiers, excess humidity may be- satisfied, the compressor shuts off, the Short run times explain why cooling come a problem during off-peak coil stops dehumidifying, and moisture About the Authors hourswhen a buildings sensible heat remaining on its surface can re-evapo- Lewis G. Harriman III is director of research load is low, but its moisture load remains rate back into the air. At the same time, and consulting at Mason-Grant, Portsmouth, N.H. high. humid ventilation air flows through that He was the principal investigator for ASHRAE When the sensible load in the space inactive coil, flooding the building 1047-RP: Development of a Design Guide for Humidity Control in Commercial Buildings. is low, the compressors in a typical ther- with excess humidity. The net result is James Judge, P.E., is a principal at LINRIC Commostatically controlled, constant-vol- that when sensible loads are low, a con- pany, Bedford, N.H.
Latent Capacity (1,000 Btu/h)

n recent years, commercial and institutional building owners have been more willing to invest in dehumidification equipment. Perhaps, they have been sensitized by litigation regarding indoor air quality problems that seem related to moisture. Or, perhaps their interest is prompted by comfort problems caused by the moisture load from higher ventilation rates.

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Figure 2: The largest moisture load in most commercial buildings comes from the ventilation air.

equipment sized for peak sensible loads and controlled by a thermostat is not effective in controlling excess humidity. Unfortunately, many designers compound this problem by adding cooling capacity when they see that moisture loads will be high, perhaps under the misimpression that extra capacity somehow removes moisture. It wont. Extra cooling capacity does not remove moisture when the cooling coil is controlled by the thermostat, as shown in Figure 1. Undersizing the cooling equipment for the peak sensible load would be a slightly better strategy to moderate high humidity. The compressor would run longer to remove the sensible load, increasing dehumidification at the same time. Usually, however, undersizing for the peak sensible load is not acceptable. When a buildings owner needs humidity control rather than just moderation, adding a dedicated dehumidifier and humidistat is the most effective approach. In most commercial buildings, the dehumidifier is placed on the incoming ventilation airstream. That way, excess moisture is removed before it spreads throughout the building.
Location of Dehumidifiers

the reasons described earlier. Consequently, a dehumidifier will be most effective if it dries the ventilation air, continuously removing the largest and most constant moisture load from the rest of the system. Thats why the authors chose to describe three types of dehumidification equipment that are specifically designed for the difficult task of drying 100% outdoor air.
Ventilation Air Dehumidifiers

During the last 10 years, manufacturers have been actively developing new dehumidification equipment. The alternatives discussed here are not the only commercial dehumidification choices, but they all handle 100% outdoor air and are each available from at least two manufacturers. Figure 3 shows three types of rooftop dehumidifiers that meet these criteria. They represent commercial rather than scientific innovationslower-cost and more fault-tolerant combinations of established mechanical and desiccant-based dehumidification technology.
Passive Type 1: Mechanical Dehumidifier with Passive Desiccant Wheel

Legend has it that when Willie Sutton, the notorious bank robber was asked why he robbed banks, he replied, Because thats where the money is. Similarly, dehumidifiers are usually placed on the incoming makeup air because thats where most of the moisture is. Figure 2 illustrates this point. It shows a moisture load estimate for a medium-size retail store located in Atlanta during 0.4% dew-point conditions. (The moisture load is likely to be exceeded for only 35 hours in a typical year.) Its obvious that the ventilation moisture load is greater than all other loads combined. ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 62-2001, Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality, recommends this level of ventilation, and most local building codes require the ASHRAE-recommended air quantities as the minimum acceptable ventilation rate. It is especially important to note the nature of this load element. During occupied hours, the ventilation load is continuous. However, the loads from people, opening doors and infiltration are intermittent. If the moisture load from ventilation air is allowed to blend into the return airstream, the simple, constant-volume DX cooling units will have a very difficult time removing it for

This equipment uses a passive desiccant wheel to recover the cooling and dehumidification effect contained in the buildings exhaust air. The passive desiccant wheel adsorbs moisture and heat from the incoming air, reducing the load on the dehumidifier whenever the wheel is turning, provided that the exhaust air is drier than the outdoor air. At peak sensible load conditions, this combination costs less to operate than the other ventilation dehumidifier described later, because of the partial moisture load reduction accomplished by the passive desiccant wheel (aka: enthalpy wheel, total heat wheel or rotary enthalpy heat exchanger). Also, compared to the other types shown here, this equipment is often the most economical to purchase. It has some limitations, including that it cannot operate without exhaust air. Performance depends on the dryness of the exhaust, and the exhaust air ductwork must be brought back to the unit. Also, the unit will need reheat to avoid delivering air that is too cold for the space. Finally, during many hours of the year the wheel may not turn. If it did, it would recover unwanted heat from the exhaust air. When the

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Type 1

Type 2

Type 3

Figure 3: Recent commercial innovations for ventilation dehumidification.

wheel is not turning, it does not reduce the moisture load on the dehumidifier. So ironically, operating costs for this type of equipment can sometimes be highest during part-load weather conditions when the passive desiccant wheel is not operating.
Type 2: Mechanical Dehumidifier with Sensible Heat Exchanger

Avoiding any need for exhaust air, this design uses an airto-air heat exchanger to pre-cool and reheat the outdoor air

that is dried with a mechanical dehumidifier. Heat pipes, coil runaround loops and plate-type heat exchangers have been used for this purpose. Because of the second pass through the heat exchanger, this equipment delivers air closer to the indoor temperature than the Type 1 configuration. Also, since the Type 2 units performance does not require dry exhaust air, this equipment can dry the ventilation air any time the humidity rises above setpoint. So, it is often configured to control humidity rather than just moderate the extreme as in the Type

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Figure 4: Using TMY observations to determine the mode (the most typical) outdoor moisture content when the dry-bulb temperature is 75F (24C).2

1 configuration. Also, the supply fan must overcome the friction of two passes through a heat exchanger. This friction, plus the extra dehumidification work for more hours of the year, sometimes makes this equipment more costly to operate. Of course, its usually doing more work than the Type 1 system.
Two-stage Type 3: Two-stage Desiccant/Mechanical Dehumidifier

This two-stage equipment uses the condenser heat from a mechanical dehumidifier to reactivate an active desiccant wheel. First, ventilation air is precooled and partly dried by the mechanical dehumidifier. Then the air is dried more deeply and also reheated by the desiccant wheel. This arrangement uses both technologies at favorable points of performance. Mechanical dehumidifiers are most effective and economical at higher inlet conditions, and desiccants gain advantages at cooler and more saturated conditions. Also, in this arrangement the heat normally wasted in a mechanical dehumidifier is put to productive use drying the desiccant wheel. Further, the design allows several stages of capacity modulation. The mechanical dehumidification sec-

tion has two compressors, which are staged, and the desiccant wheel can be stopped while the mechanical DH section continues to operate. This allows a close match between changing loads and energy use. Finally, the air leaves the unit much closer to the indoor air temperature than is the case with desiccant-only equipment. So, the overall performance of this configuration is quite impressive in terms of all-weather deepdrying capacity as well as low operating costs. Limitations of this configuration include the fact that the supply air temperature changes according to how much drying the desiccant wheel does. So the leaving air temperature from this equipment is neither constant nor controllable.
Evaluating Ventilation Dehumidifiers

In commercial HVAC, the needs are very diverse, and so are the equipment offerings. Any comparison between competing offerings will be specific to a particular set of economic and geographic circumstances. The authors would suggest that, at the very least, the vendors should be willing to provide the designer with the answers to these questions: What does the unit cost?

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Figure 5: A two-stage desiccant/mechanical ventilation dehumidifier at 2% dew-point design, and part-load conditions.

How does it perform at peak dew-point design? (How much moisture will it remove from the ventilation air and from the building itself?) What is the performance at the more common part-load condition? How much energy does it use at part-load condition? The units price is obviously important. Its moisture removal is equally so, and is useful to note that the performance questions really have two parts. Ventilation dehumidifiers remove moisture from incoming air. Also, at some outdoor conditions, they deliver dry air somewhat below the indoor design dew point, dehumidifying the space as well. However, that is not always the case. Under other conditions, the unit may not dry the ventilation air deeply enough to remove any moisture from the building. The vendor needs to quantify moisture removal from the space itself as well as the delivered air temperature. With that information, the designer can adapt the rest of the system to take advantage of the dehumidifiers strengths and compensate for any limitations. Further, although the energy use at peak design is useful information, the more important figure is the typical hourly energy use. In other words, the energy consumed for 98% of the operating hours instead of for just 2% of them. When possible, an 8,760-hour building simulation will provide the best estimates of operating costs. However, not all projects have design budgets that justify such analysis. Another approach is to have the vendor calculate the performance and energy use at some off-peak condition, which may be more

typical of the bulk of the operating hours than its performance at the peak load. As far as the authors are aware, no general agreement exists on what constitutes a reasonable and consistent off-peak condition with which to test dehumidifier performance and energy use. The authors have a suggestion that other designers may wish to consider.
Part-Load Dehumidification Design Conditions

Chapter 27 of the 2001 ASHRAE HandbookFundamentals notes that the peak dehumidification design condition is a useful checkpoint for part-load cooling conditions. That seems logical, since at the peak moisture, the sensible heat load is much reduced. Checking a cooling systems performance at that point makes sense, because the calculation could expose limitations of control system logic or limitations of equipment capacity modulation. The handbook makes no similar suggestion of a part-load condition for highlighting any limitations of dehumidification systems. We propose a latent part-load design point (the LPL) at which the ventilation load is entirely latent. That is to say, the point when the outdoor dry bulb is the same as the temperature in the space, so any load from ventilation air involves removing moisture alone. To find out how much moisture is probable, one can examine the typical hourly weather for that location, and determine the most common moisture content of the ventilation air when the outdoor dry bulb temperature is neutral. This produces an LPL design point below the peak sensible and moisture loads, and as

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such it allows examination of the more usual behavior of the dehumidifier. Figure 4 shows how one can use TMY weather data to construct this off-peak design point for moisture. TMY weather data was constructed by the U.S. Department of Energy. It contains a full year of hourly observations (8,760 hours). The data were selected from the long-term record, and are representative of the typical weather pattern at each location.3 First, the full years hourly observations of dry-bulb temperature and humidity ratio are extracted from the TMY record. Then, the hours are sorted by dry-bulb temperature. Hours when the temperature is between 74.5F and 75.5F (23C and 24C) are selected for further analysis. The mode (the most common) of the selected humidity ratios is calculated for that range. The latent part-load condition is then 75F (24C) with the mode of the humidity ratios that occur at that temperature. Figure 4 shows the results for Miami. The red horizontal bars on the chart show the number of hours each humidity ratio occurs when the temperature is between 74.5F and 75.5F (23C and 24C). Underneath the bars, the colorcoded dots indicate the binned TMY hourly observations for all 8,760 hours of a typical year in Miami. Using the mode of humidity ratios for the selected drybulb temperature range has some advantages. In most locations, the mode gives higher values than either the mean (average) or the median (mid-point) of the range. At the mode, the ventilation air is still likely to carry a moisture load with respect to the control point in the building. On the other hand, in high altitude or desert climates, the humidity ratio mode at 75F (24C) is likely to show that the dehumidifier will seldom operate. In those climates, it may be more appropriate to compare offerings based on energy use at the peak load, since that condition may be most representative of the hours the system will actually operate. Figure 5 helps illustrate this point. The 2% dew-point design value for Phoenix is surprisingly similar to the more humid climate of Chicago. But at the suggested LPL, its clear that Chicago usually has a moisture load while that is seldom the case when the outdoor temperature is 75F (24C) in Phoenix. Figure 5 shows how the answers to the questions suggested earlier help the designer understand how geography affects a dehumidification offering. (Note: The results in the table come directly from one of the manufacturers of the third equipment alternative: the two-stage mechanical/active desiccant dehumidifier. The authors have no means of validating that performance data independently. So we suggest this particular information is most useful for understanding the geographic performance variation of Type 3 equipment, rather than being useful for comparisons with competing technologies.) Consider the difference in part-load performance of this particular equipment in Atlanta compared to either Honolulu or Chicago. In Atlanta, the part load is still high enough

to require running both compressors in the dehumidifier. So the total energy does not change. In either Honolulu or Chicago, however, the unit easily achieves the required moisture removal with a single compressor, so the typical running energy reduces from 9.8 kWh to 5.9 kWh. Also, consider the difference in moisture removal from the space at peak load compared to the latent-part-load conditions. Under Miami peak loads, this particular unit does not quite bring the outdoor air to a neutral humidity ratio. The 2,000 cfm (944 L/s) of ventilation air still adds about 8 lb/h (3 kg/h) to the internal moisture load. But at the more common part-latent-load condition, the equipment dries the incoming air deeply enough to remove 17 lb/h (6 kg/h) from the space. Given this performance at the more frequent partload conditions, the designer might consider whether the cooling system can remove any remaining moisture load during the few hours of the peak load condition. By asking vendors to quantify part-load performance, the designer obtains a better feel for the typical behavior of the system with respect to energy consumption and indoor humidity. The answer to the part-load performance question is also a way to find out if the vendor has really considered how the equipment will modulate and perform under typical rather than extreme operating conditions. When 8,760-hour analysis is not practical, quantifying part-load performance at a single point is a useful way for both the designer and the manufacturer to better understand what the buildings occupants will experience most of the time.
Summary

The case for dehumidifying the ventilation air is strong because air carries the largest part of the buildings total moisture load. Given the current focus on humidity control, equipment manufacturers are likely to offer these and other innovative ventilation dehumidifiers more widely. Part-load performance analysis is a useful tool to crosscheck a units typical moisture removal effectiveness compared to its more brief operation at the peak design condition.
References
1. Henderson, H. 1998. The impact of part-load air conditioner operation on dehumidification performance: Validating a latent capacity degradation model. Proceedings of the 1998 ASHRAE Indoor Air Quality Conference. 2. Judge, J. 2002. PsycPro. Psychrometric chart and weather summary program. 3. Harriman, L.G., G. Brundrett, R. Kittler. 2001. Humidity Control Design Guide For Commercial and Institutional Buildings. ASHRAE.

Bibliography
Hickey, D. 2001. Focus on humidity control. ASHRAE Journal 43(10):1011. Novosel, D. and D. Munn. 2001. Design phase commissioning for dehumidification. HPAC Engineering Magazine October.

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