An inverse problem methodology for estimating heat and desiccant wheels off-design parameters

Abstract

The mathematical modeling of regenerators has been adressed over the years, and has reached a stage of maturity, allowing for the dynamic response of heat and desiccant wheels to be simulated as a function of several non-dimensional design parameters. Although the values of such parameters are set at the design stage, the continuous operation can lead to significant deviation of the original design values. Accordingly, a methodology for retriving the actual operation values of design parameters (such as heat and mass convective coeffcientes) from temperature and measurements is presented. The propsed algorithm carries out a minimization of the difference between calculated and the measured data, which is used as a norm in the search of the parameters. The results show that the proposed methodology estimates the practical values of the parameters with satisfactory accuracy, and can be used as an effective predictive mantainance tool for regenerators and desiccant wheels.