MORE | Spring 2020

Investigation into regeneration methods of desiccants for vacuum desiccant cooling

Personal cooling has many medical, defense, industrial, and recreational uses. Many methods being used are heavy, cumbersome, and uncomfortable. Vacuum desiccant cooling has the potential for being a lightweight, energy-efficient, and highly controllable cooling technology, but is limited by the desiccant being saturated with water over time. The purpose of this research is to study the feasibility of using mechanical compression to reduce the energy needed to regenerate the saturated desiccant. This could potentially lead to methods to reuse the desiccant in order to improve the usefulness of vacuum desiccant cooling in personal cooling devices.