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• The system is applied to buildings with high moisture load. • Two-stage air dehumidification is adopted to distribute moisture load. • Seven operating modes are designed to match various environmental conditions. • Energy efficiency increases 3.19%-10.57% by regenerated air heating. • The better system performance could be obtained at low ambient air enthalpy. With the higher demand for indoor thermal comfort and the accurate control of air temperature and humidity, energy consumption in air conditioning systems is increasing over these years, especially for buildings with high moisture load such as natatoriums. However, freezing dehumidification is still widely adopted in eliminating moisture load, which requires lower evaporating temperature and causes excessive energy consumption. To improve energy utilization and efficiency, a heat pump-driven liquid desiccant dehumidification system is proposed in this research, the surface condenser and liquid desiccant dehumidifier are adopted to realize two-stage air dehumidification. In the summer condition, the solution in regenerator is heated by the condenser of heat pump and the residual heat is to heat the regenerated air, and the cooling capacity of heat pump is applied to the surface condenser and terminal heat exchanger, simultaneously the solution in dehumidifier is cooled by cooling tower. Under the meteorological conditions in Nanjing, the coefficient of performance could reach 6.148 in this proposed system, and compared to conventional air source heat pump dehumidification air conditioning system, the rising ratio of energy efficiency is between 11.4% and 80.7%. Eight cities in China are selected to analyze the energy-saving effects, and energy consumption could be reduced by 31.9%-63.2%, the result demonstrates the superior energy-saving potential and application prospect of the heat pump-driven liquid desiccant dehumidification system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]