Young Coconut Waste as Greener Desiccant Alterative in Desiccant Dehumidifier

Abstract

Due to tropical climate in Malaysia, humidity control becomes a challenge, hence dehumidifiers are designed to control the relative humidity in order to achieve the optimal thermal comfort. In existing desiccant dehumidifiers, the desiccants used are mostly hazardous to environment and people due to its property. Therefore, this research proposes young coconut waste as an alternative adsorbent for desiccant dehumidifier. The performance of the coconut coir is evaluated via dehumidifying duration of a 100 sqft room with initial relative humidity of 72%. The recorded data are compared to the samesized desiccant filters from silica gel, calcium oxide and calcium sulphate. The RH Delta value demonstrates that the humidity adsorptivity performance rank is dominated by calcium sulphate (0.129), followed by young coconut waste (0.086), silica gel (0.086) and calcium oxide (0.043) in descending order. This indicates that young coconut waste is as competitive as silica gel, which is a common commercial desiccant. Moreover, young coconut waste has the lowest formaldehyde average emission that is 0.058 ppm compared to 0.06 ppm by calcium oxide. This exhibits that young coconut is not only competitive in terms of humidity adsorptivity, but also environment-friendly and is therefore very attractive to replace chemical desiccant in dehumidifier.