FREESCOO facade 3.0, a compact DEC thermally driven air-conditioning system for apartments

FREESCOO is an innovative Desiccant Evaporative Cooling air conditioning system designed for ventilation, cooling, dehumidification and heating of buildings in residential and tertiary sectors. This paper presents the third generation of the façade version, which will be tested on field in Milan (Italy) within the Merezzate+ project supported by Climate-KIC. The adsorption bed used by the system is a finned heat exchanger packed with silica gel grains, which allows simultaneous dehumidification and cooling of the process air. The direct evaporative cooling process, operated downstream to the dehumidification, is realized using a rotary plate humidifier. The regeneration of the adsorption bed is done through low-grade heat around 60 °C and the only electrical consumption is for the fans and water recirculation. The unit has been designed in order to be integrated in the loggia of small apartments of roughly 47 m2. The result is a Seasonal Energy Efficiency Ratio around 10.7. From the primary energy savings perspective with respect to a conventional air conditioning, they can be up to 36% if the electricity generation is not renewable heavy or the district heating has a renewable energy quota.