Performance Investigation on Advanced Adsorption Cycle

Abstract

Adsorption chiller has lower environmental impact and large energy saving potential, because the system does not use the fossil fuel and electricity as driving source. Especially, the cycle with silica gel-water pair can use the heat at temperatures below 85°C as driving source. Waste heat of near environmental temperature can be utilized to drive the adsorption refrigeration cycle. In the adsorption chiller, it is important that which material is selected for adsorbent-adsorbate pair. Water, methanol or ammonia has been used as adsorbate, and silica-gel, zeolite or activated carbon has been combined with the adsorbate as adsorbent. The present study, silica gel-water pair has been selected as adsorbent-adsorbate pair. A cycle simulation computer program of the three-stage chiller using re-heat scheme is developed to improve the cooling effect comparing with conventional three-stage chiller. Simulation results show that the cooling capacity for the re-heat three-stage scheme is about 20% higher that of the three-stage cycle with the same operation conditions.