Abstract: The United Arab Emirates (UAE) is significantly dependent on desalinated water and groundwater resource, which is expensive and highly energy intensive. Despite the scarce water resource, stagnates only 54% of the recycled water was reused in 2012, and due to the lack of infrastructure to reuse the recycled water, the portion is expected to decrease with growing water usage. In this study, an “Oasis” complex comprised of Sustainable Farming Compartments (SFC) was proposed for reusing treated wastewater. The wastewater is used to decrease the ambient temperature of the SFC via an evaporative cooler. The SFC prototype was designed, built, and tested in an environmentally controlled laboratory and field site to evaluate the feasibility and effectiveness of the SFC subjected to various climatic conditions in Abu Dhabi. Based on the experimental results, the temperature drop achieved in the SFC in the laboratory and field site were5 ̊C from 22 ̊C and 7- 15 ̊C (from 33-45 ̊C to average 28 ̊C at relative humidity < 50%), respectively. An energy simulation using TRNSYS was performed to extend and validate the results obtained from the experiment. The results from the energy simulation and experiments show statistically close agreement. The total power consumption of the SFC system was approximately three and a half times lower than that of an electrical air conditioner. Therefore, by using treated wastewater, the SFC has a promising prospect to solve Abu Dhabi’s ecological concern related to desertification and wind erosion.
Abstract: This paper was to study the clothes dryer using waste
heat from a split type air conditioner with a capacity of 12,648 btu/h.
The drying chamber had a minimum cross section area with the size
of 0.5 x 1.0 m2. The chamber was constructed by sailcloth and was
inside folded with aluminium foil. Then, it was connected to the
condensing unit of an air conditioner. The experiment was carried out
in two aspects which were the clothes drying with and without
auxiliary fan unit. The results showed that the drying rate of clothes
in the chamber installed with and without auxiliary fan unit were
2.26 and 1.1 kg/h, respectively. In case of the chamber installed with
a auxiliary fan unit, the additional power of 0.011 kWh was
consumed and the drying rate was higher than that of clothes drying
without auxiliary fan unit. Without auxiliary fan unit installation, no
energy was required but there was a portion of hot air leaks away
through the punctured holes at the wall of the drying chamber, hence
the drying rate was dropped below. The drying rate of clothes drying
using waste heat was higher than natural indoor drying and
commercial dryer which their drying rate were 0.17 and 1.9 kg/h,
respectively. It was noted that the COP of the air conditioner did not
change during the operating of clothes drying.