Advanced Desiccant for Replenishment Air Moisture Removal

The Navy seeks to develop compact and energy efficient technologies to reduce the latent loads of outside air entering the ship during the summer while providing heat during the winter. This is similar to needs in building technology that are often addressed by using rotary desiccant wheels for dehumidification and by enthalpy wheels for preheating fresh makeup air in the winter. Removing water vapor from the air using a desiccant process separates the latent cooling (dehumidification) process from the sensible air cooling process, which has been demonstrated to reduce the energy cost of cooling. The use of an enthalpy wheel to transfer heat from warm indoor exhaust air to cool outdoor ventilation makeup air reduces the energy cost of heating makeup air while improving indoor air quality. Triton proposes to replace the chilled water coil currently used to dehumidify replenishment air with a desiccant wheel that uses an advanced adsorbent with water uptake capability that is 4-5 times higher than that of the commonly used silica gel and molecular sieve (zeolite) materials. This will permit a very compact system design. Another advantage of the proposed desiccant is that it is regenerated at significantly lower temperatures than common desiccant which improves energy efficiency. We will use an enthalpy wheel for winter air heating. Triton has been working with advanced adsorbents for several years and is developing manufacturing process technologies to increase batch production size and reduce cost. We will work with our partner to develop a ruggedized system design that interfaces with current and future Navy HVAC architecture. Our partner has decades of experience developing and supplying HVAC equipment for Navy surface combatants.