International Journal of Refrigeration 28 (2005) 10731083 www.elsevier.

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Study of a novel silica gelwater adsorption chiller. Part I. Design and performance prediction
D.C. Wanga, Z.Z. Xiaa, J.Y. Wua,*, R.Z. Wanga,1, H. Zhaia, W.D. Doub
a

Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai 200030, China b Jiangsu Shuangliang Air Conditioning Equipment Co. Ltd, Jiangsu 214444, China Received 7 December 2004; received in revised form 28 February 2005; accepted 1 March 2005 Available online 23 May 2005

Abstract A novel silica gelwater adsorption chiller is designed and its performance is predicted in this work. This adsorption chiller includes three vacuum chambers: two adsorption/desorption (or evaporation/condensation) vacuum chambers and one heat pipe working vacuum chamber as the evaporator. One adsorber, one condenser and one evaporator are housed in the same chamber to constitute an adsorption/desorption unit. The evaporators of two adsorption/desorption units are combined together by a heatpipe heat exchanger to make continuous refrigerating capacity. In this chiller, a vacuum valve is installed between the two adsorption/desorption vacuum chambers to increase its performance especially when the chiller is driven by a low temperature heat source. The operating reliability of the chiller rises greatly because of using fewer valves. Furthermore, the performance of the chiller is predicted. The simulated results show that the refrigerating capacity is more than 10 kW under a typical working condition with hot water temperature of 85 8C, the cooling water temperature of 31 8C and the chilled water inlet temperature of 15 8C. The COP exceeds 0.5 even under a heat source temperature of 65 8C. q 2005 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Design; Adsorption system; Water; Silica gel; Performance

` adsorption a ` gel de silice/eau. Etude sur un nouveau refroidisseur a Partie I. Conception et prevision de la performance
` me a ` adsorption ; Eau ; Gel de silice ; Performance s : Conception ; Syste Mots cle

1. Introduction An adsorption cooling system is a noiseless, non-corrosive,

* Corresponding author. Tel.: C86 21 62933250; fax: C86 21 62933250. E-mail address: jywu@sjtu.edu.cn (J.Y. Wu). 1 Is IIR-B2 vice president, and member of the Strategic Planning Committee of IIR.

environmentally friendly and economical system. So many researchers have made great efforts to study such a cooling system in order to commercialize it. Further, a silica gelwater adsorption cooling system has more interests for it can be driven by low-grade waste heat or solar energy. Much interesting work has been done recently. A silica gelwater adsorption chiller driven by the waste heat source has been successfully commercialized in Japan, as reported by Saha [1]. Waste heat at the temperature of 5090 8C abounds in industry. It is seldom utilized, but usually discharged into

0140-7007/$35.00 q 2005 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2005.03.001

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Nomenclature a A b c COP KA L M Me,0 _ m n P Q R T v x DH t d, q, w J constant in Van der Waals equation, Pa m6 kgK2 area, m2 constant in Van der Waals equation, m3 specic heat, kJ kgK1 8CK1 coefcient of performance performance coefcient of heat exchanger, kW 8CK1 latent heat of vaporization, kJ kgK1 mass, kg mass of residual refrigerant in evaporator, kg mass ow rate, kg sK1 times of data acquisition in one cycle pressure, Pa heat power, kW gas constant, J kgK1 KK1 temperature, K specic volume, m3 kgK1 adsorption capacity, kg kgK1 isosteric heat of adsorption, kJ kgK1 time, s ag functions mass, kg Subscript a adsorbent ad adsorber ads adsorption al aluminium c condenser chill chilled water cool cooling water cond condensing cu cuprum des desorption e evaporator evap evaporating h heat, hot in inlet mr mass recovery out outlet ref refrigeration s silica gel, saturation w water wv water vapor Superscript i the order number of the data acquisition interval

environments at present. Compared with a single-stage LiBr-water absorption chiller, a silica gelwater adsorption chilled can effectively use such low waste heat without corrosion or crystallization. Moreover, it neednt consume electric energy to drive the solution pump. Multi-bed, multistage or dual-mode adsorption chillers were developed in order to utilize low-grade waste heat. And many achievements have been obtained. Saha et al. [1] designed a threebed silica gelwater adsorption chiller and developed a cycle simulation computer program to predict its performance. For a three-bed chiller, waste heat recovery efciency is about 35% higher than that of the two-bed system, and the COP value is 0.38 with a driving source temperature at 80 8C and the coolant inlet and chilled water inlet temperatures at 30 and 14 8C, respectively. Saha et al. [2] also developed a three-stage adsorption chiller which utilized about 50 8C waste heat as the driving source and 30 8C cooling water as the cooling source. Hamamoto et al. [3] developed a two-stage adsorption refrigeration chiller prototype driven by heat source temperature from 53 to 61 8C with the evaporator and condenser temperatures at 7 and 30 8C, respectively. In Ref. [4], a multi-bed regenerative adsorption chiller design was proposed. The simulated results showed that, using the same waste heat source, a four-bed chiller generated 70% refrigerating capacity improvement compared with a typical two-bed chiller, and

a six-bed chiller generated 40% refrigerating capacity improvement compared with a four-bed chiller. Saha et al. [5] designed a dual-mode silica gelwater adsorption chiller effectively, which could utilize low temperature solar or waste heat sources with the temperature from 40 to 95 8C and could offer two operation mode: the rst mode with the driving source temperature at 6095 8C and the second mode of an advanced three stage adsorption chiller with the available driving source temperature at 4060 8C. The simulated results in Ref. [5] showed that the optimum COP values were obtained at driving source temperatures from 50 to 55 8C for three-stage mode, and from 80 to 85 8C for single-stage multi-bed mode. With the mass recovery cycle, an adsorption chiller can be driven by the heat source of a lower temperature. Under the same working condition, mass recovery cycles have advantages to conventional single stage cycle at low heat source temperature [6]. Heat and mass transfer is crucial to an adsorption chiller. The performance of heat and mass transfer in adsorber must be enhanced for the working pairs have a poor heat and mass transfer coefcients. Vichan [7] added activated carbon to the blue silica gel to improve the desorption rate and regeneration temperature of the packed bed for a solar powered adsorption cooling system. Eun et al. [8,9] used composite blocks to enhance the heat and mass transfer and led to enhancement of performances of the cooling systems.

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Restuccia et al. [10] experimentally studied the properties of the composite adsorbentmacroporous silica gel impregnated with CaCl2. Both the switching frequency and cycle time have great inuence on the performance of an adsorption chiller. Alam et al. [11] used a novel simulation technique to study the optimum switching frequency of an adsorption refrigeration system. The result showed that the optimum switching frequency is much sensitive to the heat exchangers design parameters. Chua et al. [12] developed a transient two-bed, insulated adsorption chiller model to quantify the effects of switching frequency and cycle time, they conrmed that the resultant cyclic-steady-state condition is independent of the initial refrigerant mass distribution in the beds and evaporator. The conventional or advanced chillers mentioned above all have many vacuum valves. For example, a two-bed conventional adsorption chiller [12,14] must have four or ve vacuum valves at least, and six vacuum valves are necessary for a three-bed advanced adsorption chiller [1]. These vacuum valves have caused a low-reliability problem in the commercialization. In this study, a novel silica gel water adsorption chiller is designed. This chiller is combined by three vacuum chambers: two desorption/ adsorption working chambers and one heat pipe working chamber. Such structure of the chiller decreases the number of vacuum valves. There is only one vacuum valve installed to execute mass recovery process between the two desorption/adsorption working chambers. The operating reliability of the chiller rises greatly. The main goal of this work is to propose a novel silica gelwater adsorption chiller and to testify its high effectiveness by means of a simulation prediction.

2. Adsorption chiller design 2.1. System description Fig. 1 shows the structure of the designed silica gel water adsorption chiller. This novel silica gelwater adsorption chiller is composed of three working vacuum chambers including chambers A, B and C. Chambers A and B are desorption/adsorption working chambers and each of them comprises one condenser, one adsorber and one evaporator (half water-evaporating surface of the chamber C). So this chiller also seems to be combined by two singlebed systems. Water is taken as the refrigerant. Practically, the evaporator is one gravitation heat pipe. The heat media of the heat pipe is methanol. Inside of the tubes in the coldend (upside) of the heat pipe are methanol condensing surface. The water evaporation surface, outside of the tubes in the upside, is divided into two parts by the clapboard in the middle, which lie in chambers A and B, respectively. The hot-end (lower side) of the heat pipe is the methanol evaporating side and is also the heat exchange side between the chilled water and the methanol. In this paper, the upside of the heat pipe is called water evaporator (WE), and the lower side is named as methanol evaporator (ME). So the whole evaporator seems to be combined by two WEs (WE 1 in chamber A and WE 2 in chamber B) and one ME. ME, WE1 and WE2 will also be shown in Fig. 2. In order to improve the performance and increase the adaptability to a low temperature heat source, a vacuum valve is installed between chamber A and chamber B to help the chiller fulll mass recovery process. The desorption/adsorption process is completely controlled by the electric valves in the heating/cooling water system. So such

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the designed silica gelwater adsorption chiller.

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Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of the heat-pipe combined evaporator.

structure of the system increases the reliability of the chiller though the water evaporating and condensing area is doubled, compared with the traditional two-bed system. 2.2. Components The adsorber is one compact tube-n heat exchanger. The copper tubes and mass transfer channels, framed by metal mesh and spring, are lined in arrays. The heat transfer surface is extended by aluminium ns. In the adsorbent side, the heat transfer area of each adsorber is 3.3 m2 for the heat transfer copper tubes and 60.6 m2 for the ns. The space length between two ns is 2.5 mm as the same as that recommended by Miltkau [13]. The mass transfer dimension designed is shorter than 12 mm. And the maximum dimension of heat transfer between the metal and silica gel is 1.25 mm. In each adsorber, 50 kg microporous silica gel with 0.501 mm in diameter is lled.

Fig. 3. Schematic diagram of the loop heat pipe used in the evaporator.

The condenser is a tube-shell heat exchanger, and the shell is the same to that of the chamber A or B. Two condensers are in series arrangement. The cooling water ows into the second condenser from the rst condenser, and then into the adsorber. The condensing area is 2.8 m2 for each condenser. The evaporators are combined together by a heat-pipe heat exchanger (HPHE), as shown in Fig. 2. The exterior surface of the copper tubes in the WE is water-evaporating surface that is porous medium to enhance the evaporating capability so that the volume of the evaporator can be minished. And the internal surface of the copper tubes is the methanol-condensing surface-plain pipe surface. The methanol will evaporate on the exterior surface of the heat exchange tubes in the ME of the HPHE and condense on the internal surface of the tubes in one WE (for example, WE1). This time WE1 is at work. Simultaneously, the WE2 collects the condensate coming from the condenser through the divider, so its temperature is higher than the temperatures of the WE1 and the ME of the HPHE. As a result, the heat exchange of the WE2 to the WE1 and the ME of the HPHE is isolated according to the working principle of a gravitation heat pipe. The structure of the heat pipe evaporator is more complicated and more metal is consumed, compared with the evaporator in the conventional system. However, the water evaporators can automatically switch into evaporating work, and at least two vacuum valves are decreased when the heat pipe evaporator is adopted in the system. Fig. 3 shows the cyclic process of the methanol inside the heat pipe. The liquid methanol evaporates on the exterior surface of the tubes in the ME, and the methanol vapor ows into the tubes in the WE from one side. After being

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condensed, the condensate of the methanol then returns to the ME from the other side through a U-shape tube. So this cyclic process forms a loop. As a result, the evaporator is also a loop heat pipe. In the desorption/adsorption working chamber, the vapor channel connecting the adsorber to the condenser and the evaporator has a large through-ow sectional area. Therefore, the mass transfer from the adsorber to condenser or to the evaporator is enhanced and the potential refrigerating capacity of the adsorbent rises. This structure of the chiller causes one water evaporator and one condenser idle anytime so as to decrease the utilization ratio of the evaporators and the condensers, but four vacuum valves for the switch between adsorption and desorption process are spared. Thus, the reliability of the system improves greatly.

3.2. Mass recovery process from chamber A to chamber B After the rst phase, the vacuum valve for mass recovery is opened. The vapor with a high pressure from adsorber 1 and WE 1 ows into chamber B with a high speed. Adsorber 1 continues to desorb and adsorber 2 continues to adsorb. In this phase, the temperature of the WE 1 decreases and that of the WE 2 increases. The pressures in chambers A and B trend to one value in the end of this phase. The time of this phase is mass recovery time. 3.3. Heat recovery process from the adsorber 1 to the adsorber 2 The vacuum valve for mass recovery is closed when the pressures in chamber A and B nearly come to equilibrium. Valve 11 is opened, then valves 2, 3, 6 are closed and valves 4, 9 are opened. The hot water ow runs through the bypass. The cooling water ows into adsorber 1 and pushes the resident hot water in adsorber 1 into adsorber 2. Adsorber 1 is cooled by the cooling water and adsorber 2 is heated by the resident hot water from adsorber 1. The heat is recovered. This phase will nish when the resident hot water from adsorber 1 is completely pushed into adsorber 2. The time of this phase is heat recovery time, which is determined by the owrate of the cooling water. 3.4. Chamber B works in desorption process and chamber A in adsorption process Valve 8 is opened and valves 7, 9 are closed. Then valves 1, 5, 8 are opened and valve 11 is closed. Adsorber 1 is cooled to adsorb and adsorber 2 is heated to desorb. Condenser 2 and WE 1 start to work in condensation process and evaporation process, respectively. This phase is similar to the rst phase. 3.5. Mass recovery process from chamber B to chamber A This phase is similar to the second phase. The highpressure vapor in chamber B ows through the vacuum valve into chamber A. Adsorber 1 adsorbs the vapor desorbed from adsorber 2 and WE 2. The temperature of WE 2 quickly decreases. Some refrigeration power is saved. The vacuum valve will be closed and this phase nishes when the pressures in chamber A and B nearly come to equilibrium. 3.6. Heat recovery process from adsorber 2 to adsorber 1 Valve 11 is opened and valves 1, 4 closed, then the hot water ows through the bypass. Valve 2, 10 are opened and valve 5 closed. The cooling water pushes the resident hot water in adsorber 2 owing into adsorber 1. As similar as the third phase, the heat recovery process will nish when the resident hot water from adsorber 2 is completely discharged

3. Working principle The cycle process of the designed silica gelwater adsorption chiller is different from the conventional two-bed single-stage adsorption chiller, especially in the desorption/ adsorption process. The chiller is operating in six phases. As an example, the chiller startups is from the desorption process for the adsorber 1 and the adsorption process for the adsorber 2. Then the whole cycle process can be described as: 3.1. Chamber A works in desorption process and chamber B in adsorption process In this phase, valves 2, 3, 6, 7 are opened, and other valves are closed. Hot water ows through adsorber 1. Adsorber 1 is heated to desorb and the vapor will condense in WE 1 due to its lower temperature than the condenser 1. The condensation process begins in the condenser 1 when the pressure in chamber A is higher than the corresponding saturation pressure of the condenser temperature. The condensation process will only occur in the condenser 1 when the temperature of the condenser 1 is lower than that of WE 1. During the desorption process, the condensate is distributed on the evaporating surface of WE 1 by divider 1. WE 1 acts as a collector. At the same time, adsorber 2 is cooled to adsorb by the cooling water. Water in WE 2 is vaporizing and the temperature of WE 2 decreases soon. The methanol in chamber C starts to evaporate if the temperature of WE 2 decreases lower than the corresponding saturation temperature of the pressure in chamber C. Then the chilled water will be cooled. In this phase, the temperature of WE 1 is highest and that of WE 2 is lowest among WE 1, WE 2 and ME. And the WE 1 and WE2 are separated. So the heat is only transferred from ME to WE 2. The time of this phase is heating/cooling time.

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into adsorber 1. Then the chiller will operate in the rst phase again. The cycle process will go round and round along phase 1/phase 2/phase 3/phase 4/phase 5/ phase 6/phase 1. The cycle time includes the heating/ cooling time, the mass recovery time, the heat recovery time and the valves switching time. In this study, the valves switching time is neglected, and 20 s is taken as the xed heat recovery time. The cycle process A/B/C/D/E/F/A in Fig. 4 is the ideal cycle process for this novel adsorption chiller. The processes AB and DE are heat recovery processes. The processes B/C and E/F represent that the chiller works in the heating/desorption and cooling/adsorption phases, respectively. The processes C/D and F/A are mass recovery processes. Practically the heat exchange capacity of all heat exchangers is nite, so the practical cycle process for this novel adsorption chiller is along A/ B/n/C/q/D/E/m/F/p/A. The temperature of the adsorber and the pressure in the adsorber are unceasingly changing in the whole cycle. Even so, the work area of the chiller is still magnied largely compared with the ideal basic cycle process B/C/E/F/B. The desorption occurs in the whole process A/B/n/C/ q/D and the adsorption does in the whole process D/ E/m/F/p/A.

(4) The heat conduction of the shell connecting the adsorber to the condenser or the evaporator is neglected, and the heat exchange between two WEs is absolutely isolated. (5) The system has no heat losses (or refrigerating output loss) to the environment.

4.1. Adsorption equation The adsorption equilibrium equation used in this model is developed by Boelman [14]:   P T 1=1:6 x Z 0:346 s w Ps Ts (1)

where Ps(Tw) and Ps(Ts) are respectively the corresponding saturation vapor pressures of the refrigerant at temperatures Tw (water vapor) and Ts (silica gel). The saturation vapor pressure and temperature are correlated as follows: Ps Z 0:0000888T K 273:153 K 0:0013802T K 273:152 C 0:0857427T K 273:15

4. Mathematical model A lumped parameter model is used in this study. All the parameters used in the mathematical model are listed in Table 1. And the main assumptions are taken as follows: (1) The temperature and the pressure are uniform throughout the whole adsorber. (2) The refrigerant is adsorbed uniformly in the adsorber and is liquid in the adsorbent. (3) The pressure difference between the adsorber and the condenser or the evaporator is neglected.

C 0:4709375

(2)

4.2. Energy equations Different from other two-bed system, the energy equations for the condenser and the evaporator is more complicated. The condensation process occurs rstly in the evaporator during the desorption process because the evaporator temperature is lower than the condenser temperature and also the saturation temperature of the refrigerant vapor. The condensation process will occur only in the condenser after the evaporator temperature rises higher than the saturation temperature. (1) Energy balance for the adsorber/desorber d fMa ca C cp;w x C ccu Mtube;ad C cal Mfin;ad Ta g dt Z Ma DH dx dx C 1 K dcwv Ma ads Te K Ta dt dt (3)

_ w cp;w Tad;in K Tad;out Cm   Tad;out K Ta KKAad Z exp _ w cp;w m Tad;in K Ta

Fig. 4. P-T diagram for the ideal basic cycle, ideal and practical cycles of this chiller.

(4)

where

D.C. Wang et al. / International Journal of Refrigeration 28 (2005) 10731083 Table 1 Physical property parameters used in the simulation Symbol a b cp,w ca cal ccu cwv DH KAad (heating) KAad (cooling) KAc KAe L Ma Mtube,ad Mn,ad Mc Me R Value 1714.2 1.7!10K3 4.180 0.924 0.905 0.386 1.850 2800 3570 3290 6090 3420 2500 50.0 21.8 10.9 15.2 65.1 461.5 Unit Pa m6 kgK2 m3 kJ kgK1 KK1 kJ kgK1 KK1 kJ kgK1 KK1 kJ kgK1 KK1 kJ kgK1 KK1 kJ kgK1 W KK1 W KK1 W KK1 W KK1 kJ kgK1 kg kg kg kg kg J kgK1 KK1

1079

( dZ

1; 0;

desorption process adsorption process

( (5) qZ

1 ; Tc % Te 0 ; Tc O Te

(10)

(2) Energy balance for the condenser dT ccu ,Mc , c dt  dx dx Z d, KL,Ma , des C cwv ,Ma , des ,Tc K Ta dt dt  _ cool ,cp:w ,Tcool;in K Tcool;out 6 Cm   Tcool;out K Tc KKAc Z exp _ cool cp;w m Tcool;in K Tc

4.3. Liquid refrigerant equilibrium in evaporator dMe;w dx Z Me;0 K Ma dt dt (11)

4.4. Equilibrium equations in the mass recovery process In the mass recovery process, the condensers will be in idle, the evaporator in the desorbing chamber will begin evaporating, and the evaporator in the adsorbing chamber will condensate the water vapor acting as a condenser. The desorption process of the desorber and the adsorption process of the adsorber accelerate under the driving force of the pressure difference between the desorbing chamber and the adsorbing chamber. The different equations in this phase from the desorption/adsorption process are listed in the following. Mass equilibrium: KMa dxdes dx _ e;evap Z m _ mr _ e;cond C Ma ads Z m Cm dt dt (12)

(7)

(3) Energy balance for the evaporatorThe HPHE is taken as one part, and the heat and mass transfer process of inside is not taken into account. d c M C ccu Me Te Z 1 K d dt p;w e;w   dx _ chill cp;w Tchill;in K Tchill;out ! KLMa ads C m dt   dx dx Cd qcp;w Te K Tc Ma des K 1 K qLMa des dt dt (8)   Tchill;out K Te KKAe Z exp _ chill cp;w m Tchill;in K Te where (9)

Energy equation in the evaporator d c M C ccu Me Te dt p;w e;w _ chill cp;w Tchill;in K Tchill;out Z KLJ C wm where ( JZ _ e;evap ; m _ e;cond ; m (13)

for desorbing chamber for adsorbing chamber

(14)

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and ( wZ 1; 0; Te % Tchill;in Te O Tchill;in (15)

_ e;evap and m _ e;cond are respectively the mass ow rates where m of refrigerant evaporated in the evaporator of the desorbing chamber and condensed in the evaporator of the adsorption chamber. The vapor is assumed as incompressible ow and the ow resistance of the water vapor is neglected. The pressures in the chambers can be calculated by the follows: Pwv;des K Pwv;abs Z _2 vwv m mr 2A2 (16)

Fig. 5. Temperature proles of heat transfer uids.

where A is the sectional area of the mass recovery channel. The Van der Waals equation is introduced to calculate the state parameters for water vapor:   a (17) Pwv C 2 v K b Z RTwv v 4.5. Performance parameters equations Refrigerating capacity: tcycle _ chill Tchill;in K Tchill;out dt cp;w m Qref Z 0 tcycle Heating power: tcycle Qh Z
0

(18)

the adsorber is still strong but the heating power becomes very small. Therefore, the heating/cooling time of 900 s is recommended for a typical working condition, especially when a higher COP required. This result also can be found in Fig. 6. From Fig. 5, an effective mass recover process can be found. During the mass recovery process, the hot water outlet temperature will decrease about 4 8C in 60 s for the heat consumed by the desorber sharply increases, and the cooling water outlet temperature increases about 1.5 8C for large quantity of heat yields in the adsorber. So the mass recovery has caused a quite forceful second-adsorption/desorption process, which is slightly different from the results of the previous work about the adsorption cooling system. This process increases the cyclic adsorption capacity of the adsorber/desorber. Thereby, the potential refrigerating capacity of the chiller rises, though the chiller has no refrigerating output in the mass recovery process. 5.2. Heating/cooling time The refrigerating capacity and the COP variations with the heating/cooling time are shown in Fig. 6. The COP increases uniformly with extension of the heating/cooling time under a driving heat source of 65 or 85 8C. This is because a longer heating/cooling time causes much lower

_ h Th;in K Th;out dt cp;w m tcycle

(19)

Q COP Z ref Qh

(20)

5. Results and discussions 5.1. Water temperature variations Fig. 5 shows the temperature proles of the hot, cooling and chilled water. Phrases 1, 2 and 3 respectively represent the heating/cooling process, the mass recovery process and the heat recovery process. The hot water outlet temperature approaches to the inlet temperature after the adsorber is heated about 600 s. After this moment, the heat consumed by the desorber will be very small. But the difference between outlet and inlet temperature for the cooling water is still 3 8C after the adsorber is cooled about 600 s. This difference will reach 1.7 8C until the cooling time is extending to 900 s. Heretofore, the adsorption ability of

Fig. 6. Effect of the heating/cooling time on the refrigerating capacity and the COP (180 s mass recovery time; cooling water inlet temperature: 31 8C; chilled water inlet temperature: 15 8C).

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consumption of driving heat, but the refrigerating capacity decreases a little along with a longer heating/cooling time. For a different heat source temperature at 65 or 85 8C, the heating/cooling time has different effect on the refrigerating capacity. The effect of the heating/cooling time is less intense for a lower heat source temperature. 5.3. Mass recovery time Figs. 7 and 8 show the effects of the mass recovery time on the performance of the chiller. In the range of the mass recovery time from 150 to 200 s, there is an optimal value for the refrigerating capacity when the hot water temperature is 85 8C. But the optimal value of the refrigerating capacity will be longer than 240 s if the hot water temperature is 65 8C. This indicates a longer mass recovery time is more important to improve the refrigerating capacity of the chiller for a lower heat source temperature. The COP gains its maximum value with the mass recovery time at about 60 s for a hot water temperature at 65 or 85 8C. The reason of the variation for the COP is because longer mass recovery time increases the ratio of the time without refrigerating output in one cycle besides the mass recovery time increases the adsorption capacity of the adsorbent. 5.4. Operating temperatures As a driving force, the hot water is crucial to the performance of the chiller, especially to the refrigerating capacity, as shown in Fig. 9. The refrigerating capacity increases about 76% for a chilled water temperature at 15 8C and 59% for a chilled water temperature at 20 8C when the driving heat source is 85 8C, compared with a 65 8C heat source. As for COP, the improvement is only 0.916% with the hot water temperature variation from 65 to 85 8C, because a higher hot water temperature causes a higher heating power as well as a higher refrigerating capacity. For this chiller, the optimal hot water temperature is in the range between 80 and 85 8C for the COP.

Fig. 8. Effect of the mass recovery time on the COP (900 s heating/cooling time).

Figs. 10 and 11 show the effects of the cooling water and chilled water on the performance of the chiller. As similar as the effect of the hot water temperature, the refrigerating capacity is more sensitive to the cooling water temperature or the chilled water inlet temperature than the COP. For a typical working condition with the chilled water inlet temperature at 15 8C, the hot water temperature at 85 8C and the cooling water inlet temperature at 31 8C, the refrigerating capacity is more than 10 kW. If the chilled water inlet temperature rises to 20 8C, the refrigerating capacity reaches 12.6 kW. The corresponding SCPs under these two typical working conditions are 104 and 126 W/kg, respectively. hring diagram 5.5. Du hring diagram of the chiller. The Fig. 12 shows the Du hring diagram for the adsorber of this chiller is much Du different from that of a conventional chiller with vacuum valves for the adsorption/desorption switch [1]. In the desorption process (phase 1/m/2 in Fig. 12) or the adsorption process (phase 3/n/4), the pressure in adsorption/desorption vacuum chambers are variational all the time. So there is a peak (point m) for the desorption process and a nadir (point n) for the adsorption process, which are corresponding to an intense adsorption point and an intense desorption point, respectively. The mass recovery

Fig. 7. Effect of the mass recovery time on the refrigerating capacity (900 s heating/cooling time).

Fig. 9. Effect of the hot water temperature on the refrigerating capacity and the COP (900 s heating/cooling time; 180 s mass recovery time; cooling water inlet temperature: 31 8C).

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Fig. 10. Effect of the cooling water temperature on the refrigerating capacity and the COP (900 s heating/cooling time; 180 s mass recovery time).

hring diagram of the novel chiller based on the simulated Fig. 12. Du results (900 s heating/cooling time; 180 s mass recovery time).

process causes a less change of the pressure in the adsorber than that in the desorber. This is because the pressure level of the chiller is predominated by the temperature of the evaporator during the mass recovery process rather than by the condenser temperature in the desorption process. (2)

6. Conclusions The chiller designed in this work is a reliable and highefcient machine, though one evaporator and one condenser are idle anytime. As the simulation results using one simple model, the refrigerating capacity is more than 10 kW and the COP exceeds 0.5 under the available working conditions. The typical working conditions selected in the conclusions are the cooling water inlet temperature of 31 8C and the chilled water inlet temperature of 15 or 20 8C. Through the analysis of the prediction results, some conclusions can be drawn for this work as follows: (1) The inuence of the operating parameters on COP and SCP of this novel system shows the similar trends compared with the previous conventional system.

(3)

(4)

(5)

Differently from the previous works, for the novel system, the hot water outlet temperature and the adsorber temperature sharply change because of the effective mass recovery process, and there are no isobaric processes although the working process because there no vacuum valves installed between the adsorber and the condenser or the evaporator so that the pressure of the system always changes. The refrigerating capacity is 6 kW under driving heat source at 65 8C, and the improvement is 76% if the heat source temperature rises to 85 8C. The COP exceeds 0.5 even under a 65 8C heat source. And the optimal hot water temperature is in the range between 80 and 85 8C for the COP. If the chilled water inlet temperature is 20 8C, a 12.6 kW refrigerating capacity and a 0.65 COP are obtained. This result is much valuable for utilization in the eld of no requirement for dehumidication. For a better refrigerating capacity as well as the COP, 900 s heating/cooling time and 180 s mass recovery time are recommended. The mass recovery process has greater inuence on the performance with a lower heat source temperature, such as 65 8C.

Acknowledgements This work is supported by National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China under the contract No. 50225621, the state Key Fundamental Research Program under the contract No. G2000026309 and Shanghai Shuguang Training Program for the Talents under the contract No. 02SG11.

Fig. 11. Effect of the chilled water temperature on the refrigerating capacity and the COP (900 s heating/cooling time; 180 s mass recovery time).

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