controlling humidity is what all air conditioners do best! It's the first thing they do, before cooling the air.I’m not sure if this has been covered but do mini splits typically control humidity at adjustable levels or do you need to get certain models that can do it?
Window-mounted, ducted mini-split, non-ducte mini-split, ceiling cassette, free-standing portable units, whatever... they all work on the same principle, and it's actually not complicated.
The cooing cools inside the indoor unit (the ducted or non-ducted AHU) are, well ... ummm. they are "cool". In fact, they are very cold: icy. When humid air comes into contact with a cold surface of those coils and the fins attached to them, the water vapor in the air condenses on the cold metal, into liquid water. It then drips from the cooling fins into a condensate collection tray, and is carried away through a condensate drain. Thus it is gone: removed from the air, and removed from the room. The air has then been dehumidified.
That's the FIRST thing that happens when the air passes over the cold fins and pipes in the AHU. The SECOND thing is that it actully cools the air... but only if it is able to do so. There's a secondary issue here. When water vapor condenses into liquid, that is a heating process: it heats up the cooling fins and pipes in the AHU. So if the unit is not powerful enough, it will use up all of it's capacity in just turning the humid air into drier air at the same temperature, but WITHOUT cooling it. The heat generated by condensation will be enough to "use up" all of the "coldness" in the coils/fins, warming them up to room temperature... so they won't be able to cool the air, after they dehumidified it.
That's why you need to do the calculations carefully for your HVAC system, to make sure that it has enough capacity to deal with both the latent heat load in the air (humidity), and also the sensible heat load in the air (warmth). The unit cannot remove any sensible heat until it has first dealt with the latent heat.
All air conditions work the same way: passing the room air over some type of cooling coils with fins on them, so the issue is exactly the same, regardless of the type you chose.
Yet another one of the 47,653 things you need to take into account when designing your studio!
- Stuart -