Study of a two-bed silica gel–water adsorption chiller: performance analysis

In this study, a lumped parameter simulation model has been developed for analysis of the thermal performance of a single-stage two-bed adsorption chiller. Since silica gel has low regeneration temperature and water has high latent heat of vaporisation, silica gel–water pair has been chosen as the working pair of the adsorption chiller. Low-grade waste heat or solar heat at around 70–80°C can be used to run this adsorption chiller. In this model, the effects of operating parameters on the performance of the chiller have been studied. The simulated results show that the cooling capacity of the chiller has an optimum value of 5.95?kW for a cycle time of 1600?s with the hot, cooling, and chilled water inlet temperatures at 85°C, 25°C, and 14°C, respectively. The present model can be utilised to investigate and optimise adsorption chillers.     

Simulation and Experimental Study of Metal Organic Frameworks Used in Adsorption Cooling

ABSTRACT

Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have recently attracted enormous interest over the past few years in energy storage and gas separation, yet there have been few reports for adsorption cooling applications. Adsorption cooling technology is an established alternative to mechanical vapor compression refrigeration systems and is an excellent alternative in industrial environments where waste heat is available. We explored the use of MOFs that have very high mass loading and relatively low heats of adsorption, with certain combinations of refrigerants to demonstrate a new type of highly efficient adsorption chiller. Computational fluid dynamics combined with a system level lumped-parameter model have been used to project size and performance for chillers with a cooling capacity ranging from a few kW to several thousand kW. These systems rely on stacked micro/mini-scale architectures to enhance heat and mass transfer. Recent computational studies of an adsorption chiller based on MOFs suggests that a thermally-driven coefficient of performance greater than one may be possible, which would represent a fundamental breakthrough in performance of adsorption chiller technology. Presented herein are computational and experimental results for hydrophyilic and fluorophilic MOFs.     

The influence of heat exchanger parameters on the optimum cycle time of adsorption chillers

The research investigated the influences of heat exchanger parameters, such as heat capacity and NTU, on the optimum performance of a single-stage adsorption chiller. Silica gel–water pair was chosen as the adsorbent–adsorbate combination so that low temperature heat source under than 100 °C could be utilized as the driving force.The mathematical model of the adsorption chiller using dimensionless parameters was developed and a global optimization method called the particle swarm optimization was applied in the simulation to obtain the optimum cycle time. The results showed that the smaller heat capacity heat exchanger improved both the maximum specific cooling capacity (SCC) and the COP. While, the larger NTU of the adsorbent bed resulted in the decrease of the COP due to the short cycle time although the maximum SCC was enhanced.     

Simulation of operating characteristics of the silica gel-water adsorption chiller powered by solar energy

A lumped parameter model of a silica gel-water adsorption chiller driven by solar energy was introduced for the operating characteristics investigation. Matlab-Simulink, as a high-performance computing and programming tool, was used to simulate the operating characteristics of the chiller. Effects of the hot water tank capacity, the cycle time and the initial hot water temperature on the performance of the chiller were analyzed when the chiller was driven by a stable heat source and solar energy respectively. The simulation results indicated that when the chiller was driven by solar energy, the open circulation of the hot water with a short cycle time and the closed circulation of hot water with a longer cycle time were better. A proposal was also provided for the chiller driven by solar energy to work under the optimum working conditions, such as hot water circulation mode, cycle time and initial temperature.     

Transient modeling of a two-bed silica gel-water adsorption chiller

This article presents a transient distributed-parameter model for a two-bed, silica gel-water adsorption chiller. Compared with our previous lumped-parameter model, we found better agreement between our model prediction and experimental data. We discussed the important effect of heat recovery and the effect of extra system piping on the system performance. Time constants of sensors were also considered. We found that the chiller was able to maintain its cooling capacity over a fairly broad range of cycle times and the previous lumped-parameter model tended to under-predict the cooling capacity at long cycle times.     

Performance evaluation of multi-stage, multi-bed adsorption chiller employing re-heat scheme

This paper deals with the performance investigation of a silica gel/water-based multi-stage, multi-bed, six-bed adsorption chiller employing re-heat scheme. The innovative chiller is powered by waste heat or renewable energy sources of temperature between 50 and 70 °C along with a coolant of inlet temperature at 30 °C for air-conditioning purpose. The performance of the six-bed adsorption chiller using re-heat scheme is compared with that of the six-bed chiller without re-heat. With the same operating conditions, such as the heat transfer fluid inlet (HTF) temperatures, HTF flow rates, adsorption/desorption cycle time and same chiller physical dimension, it is found that both the cooling capacity (CC) and the coefficient of performance (COP) of the three-stage chiller with re-heat scheme are superior than those of the three-stage chiller without re-heat scheme.     

Study on solar driven combined adsorption refrigeration cycles in tropical climate

This paper presents the theoretical analysis of the performance of solar powered combined adsorption refrigeration cycles that has been designed for Singapore and Malaysia and similar tropical regions using evacuated tube solar collectors. This novel cycle amalgamates the activated carbon (AC)-R507A as the bottoming cycle and activated carbon-R134a cycle as the topping cycle and deliver refrigeration load as low as ?10 °C at the bottoming cycle. A simulation program has been developed for modeling and performance evaluation for the solar driven combined adsorption refrigeration cycle using the meteorological data of Singapore and Malaysia. The results show that the combined cycle is in phase with the weather. The optimum cooling capacity, coefficient of performance (COP) and chiller efficiency are calculated in terms of cycle time, switching time, regeneration and brine inlet temperatures.     

The effects of operation parameter on the performance of a solar-powered adsorption chiller

A solar-powered adsorption chiller with heat and mass recovery cycle was designed and constructed. It consists of a solar water heating unit, a silica gel-water adsorption chiller, a cooling tower and a fan coil unit. The adsorption chiller includes two identical adsorption units and a second stage evaporator with methanol working fluid. The effects of operation parameter on system performance were tested successfully. Test results indicated that the COP (coefficient of performance) and cooling power of the solar-powered adsorption chiller could be improved greatly by optimizing the key operation parameters, such as solar hot water temperature, heating/cooling time, mass recovery time, and chilled water temperature. Under the climatic conditions of daily solar radiation being about 16–21 MJ/m², this solar-powered adsorption chiller can produce a cooling capacity about 66–90 W per m² collector area, its daily solar cooling COP is about 0.1–0.13.     

A numerical analysis of cooling water temperature of two-stage adsorption chiller along with different mass ratios

This paper deals with the performance investigation of a silica gel/water based on two-stage, four-bed adsorption chiller with different mass allocation between upper and lower beds employing the re-heat scheme. The innovative chiller is powered by waste heat or renewable energy source of temperature between 50 °C and 90 °C with a coolant of inlet temperature 30 °C for air conditioning purpose. The performance of the four-bed adsorption chiller employing the re-heat scheme is compared with that of the two-stage conventional chiller with the re-heat scheme using equal mass allocation. Results show that cooling capacity can be improved with the optimum allocation of adsorbent mass to the upper beds than that of lower beds. Besides, it is observed that the cooling capacity can be improved up to 10.78% while the cooling water temperature is at 20 °C.     

A new generation cooling device employing CaCl2-in-silica gel–water system

This article presents the dynamic modelling of a single effect two-bed adsorption chiller utilizing the composite adsorbent “CaCl₂ confined to KSK silica gel” as adsorbent and water as adsorbate, which is based on the experimentally confirmed adsorption isotherms and kinetics data. Compared with the experimental data of conventional adsorption chiller based on RD silica gel + water pair, we found that the new working pair provides better cooling capacity and performances. From numerical simulation, it is also found that the cooling capacity can be increased up to 20% of the parent silica gel + water adsorption chiller and the coefficient of performance (COP) can be improved up to 25% at optimum conditions. We also demonstrate here that the best peak chilled water temperature suppression, and the maximum cooling capacity can be achieved by the optimum analysis for both cycles.     

Study on a dual-mode, multi-stage, multi-bed regenerative adsorption chiller

In this paper, a detailed parametric study on a dual-mode silica gel–water adsorption chiller is performed. This advanced adsorption chiller utilizes effectively low-temperature solar or waste heat sources of temperature between 40 and 95 °C. Two operation modes are possible for the advanced chiller. The first operation mode will be to work as a highly efficient conventional chiller where the driving source temperature is between 60 and 95 °C. The second operation mode will be to work as an advanced three-stage adsorption chiller where the available driving source temperature is very low (between 40 and 60 °C). With this very low driving source temperature in combination with a coolant at 30 °C, no other cycle except an advanced adsorption cycle with staged regeneration will be operational. In this paper, the effect of chilled-water inlet temperature, heat transfer fluid flow rates and adsorption–desorption cycle time effect on cooling capacity and COP of the dual-mode chiller is performed. Simulation results show that both cooling capacity and COP values increase with the increase of chilled water inlet temperature with driving source temperature at 50 and 80 °C in three-stage mode, and single-stage multi-bed mode, respectively. However, the delivered chilled-water temperature increases with chilled-water inlet temperature in both modes.     

Transient analysis and energy optimization of solar heating and cooling systems in various configurations

In this paper, a transient simulation model of solar-assisted heating and cooling systems (SHC) is presented. A detailed case study is also discussed, in which three different configurations are considered. In all cases, the SHC system is based on the coupling of evacuated solar collectors with a single-stage LiBr-H₂O absorption chiller, and a gas-fired boiler is also included for auxiliary heating, only during the winter season. In the first configuration, the cooling capacity of the absorption chiller and the solar collector area are designed on the basis of the maximum cooling load, and an electric chiller is used as the auxiliary cooling system. The second layout is similar to the first one, but, in this case, the absorption chiller and the solar collector area are sized in order to balance only a fraction of the maximum cooling load. Finally, in the third configuration, there is no electric chiller, and the auxiliary gas-fired boiler is also used in summer to feed the absorption chiller, in case of scarce solar irradiation.The simulation model was developed using the TRNSYS software, and included the analysis of the dynamic behaviour of the building in which the SHC systems were supposed to be installed. The building was simulated using a single-lumped capacitance model. An economic model was also developed, in order to assess the operating and capital costs of the systems under analysis. Furthermore, a mixed heuristic-deterministic optimization algorithm was implemented, in order to determine the set of the synthesis/design variables that maximize the energy efficiency of each configuration under analysis.The results of the case study were analyzed on monthly and weekly basis, paying special attention to the energy and monetary flows of the standard and optimized configurations. The results are encouraging as for the potential of energy saving. On the contrary, the SHC systems appear still far from the economic profitability: however, this is notoriously true for the great majority of renewable energy systems.     

A comparative evaluation of two different heat-recovery schemes as applied to a two-bed adsorption chiller

This study investigates the efficiency of two distinct heat-recovery schemes as applied to the two-bed silica gel–water adsorption chiller. Performance predictions stemming from an experimentally verified distributed-parameter model compare favorably with the experimental results at various operating conditions. Our study highlights the pivotal role played by heat-recovery schemes to ameliorate the chiller performance and substantially improve the coefficient of performance (or COP). The two different schemes essentially offer the same cooling capacity and similar COP boosting capability. In the studied working conditions of a two-bed adsorption chiller, the difference in COP by using the two schemes is less than 5%.     

Experimental study of a low temperature heat driven re-heat two-stage adsorption chiller

The performance of an advanced adsorption chiller, namely, ‘reheat two-stage’ has been investigated experimentally in the present study. The performances in terms of specific cooling power (SCP) and COP are compared with those of conventional single and two-stage chiller. Results show that the reheat two-stage chiller provides more SCP values than those provided by conventional single-stage chiller while it provides better COP values for relatively low heat source temperature. The reheat two-stage chiller also provides almost same cooling capacity comparing with two-stage chiller for the low temperature heat source, while it provides higher COP value than that provided by two-stage chiller. Experimental results also show that the overall performance of the reheat two-stage chiller is always higher than that of conventional single and two-stage adsorption cycle even the temperature of the heat source is fluctuated between 55 and 80 °C.     

Study on solar/waste heat driven multi-bed adsorption chiller with mass recovery

The study deals with a solar or waste heat driven three-bed adsorption cooling cycle employing mass recovery scheme. A cycle simulation computer program is developed to investigate the performance of the chiller. The innovative chiller is driven by exploiting solar/waste heat of temperatures between 60 and 90 °C with a cooling source at 30 °C for air-conditioning purpose. The performance of the three-bed adsorption chiller with mass recovery scheme was compared with that of the three-bed chiller without mass recovery. It is found that cooling effect as well as solar/waste heat recovery efficiency, η of the chiller with mass recovery scheme is superior to those of three-bed chiller without mass recovery for heat source temperatures between 60 and 90 °C. However, COP of the proposed chiller is higher than that of the three-bed chiller without mass recovery, when heat source temperature is below 65 °C.     

Assessing performance and controlling operating conditions of a solar driven absorption chiller using simplified numerical models

In cooling buildings, the use of solar energy can save around 50% of primary energy. Many studies have demonstrated the interest of such systems. However, developing and improving reliability of new components, design, control, and implementation remain a major concern. The performances of solar cooling systems are greatly influenced by climatic conditions. Indeed they affect both the driving energy of the chiller and the heat rejection. It is important to mention that internal loads and control strategy also have an impact on energy performances. Therefore, assessing the energy performance during the design phase is a key point in evaluating the economic interest of an installation. Moreover, once the commissioning of the installation is accomplished, there is a need to follow through and ensure its performance, since a large number of malfunctions can affect the quality of the system. Actual performances can be very different from those calculated in the design phase.With this aim, the present article deals with the development of an absorption chiller model used in an existing solar cooling system. This installation includes a single effect absorption chiller with a nominal chilling capacity of 30 kW (EAW LB30 chiller functioning with water and lithium bromide), and it cools four classrooms of a University building in Reunion Island which is situated under a tropical climate. This pilot plant is very good monitored and can thus be used to develop and validate the absorption chiller model. The present paper first recalls the absorption principle and presents the pilot plant, the metrology, and the control strategy. Secondly, the experimental results are analysed and the steady state chiller model and also the identification method are developed. Thereafter, the simplex method is used to determine the design parameters of the machine. Finally, the simulation results are presented. The good agreement between the prediction and the experimental results allows the use of the model not only to design an installation but also to follow and control its performances.     

Autonomous Adsorption Cooling—Driven by Heat Storage Collected from Solar Heat

This study investigates the performance of an adsorption chiller driven by thermal heat collected from solar collectors’ panels with heat storage. The heat is reserved in a storage tank and the reserved heat is used to drive the adsorption chiller. The investigation was carried on the climatic conditions of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Heat transfer fluid goes from the collectors to the adsorption cooling unit, then from the adsorption cooling unit to the storage tank. It is seen that heat storage is more effective than direct solar coupling; however, it requires more collectors, depending on the size of the storage tank. The analysis shows that cycle time is one of the most influential parameters for the solar-driven adsorption cooling system. It is seen that the size of the collector can be reduced if the proper cycle time is adjusted. The analysis also revealed that the system with 22 collectors (each of 2.415 m²) along with 1000 s cycle time provides better performance for the base run conditions. It is also seen that the solar-driven adsorption chiller with heat storage works well beyond the sunset time.     

Heat-exchanger design and switching-frequency effects on the performance of a continuous type solar adsorption chiller

A transient one-dimensional model, capable of describing the performance of a newly-introduced adsorption chiller with continuous operation, is developed. Since the cycle time and the switching frequency have a great influence on chiller performance, a non-dimensional switching frequency is introduced and a systematic parametric study is carried out in order to determine regions of optimal operation. An optimization based on the thermodynamic efficiency yields a lower switching frequency than an optimization based on the maximum cooling capacity. In addition, the effect of the heat-exchanger design parameters on system performance is explored. An increase of either the bed’s Fourier number or the thermofluid’s Nusselt number has a positive effect on both COP and cooling capacity. An improvement of system performance can also be achieved by decreasing either the thermofluid’s Fourier number or the bed’s Biot number. Finally, the effect of space velocity of the thermofluid exhibits the most interesting behavior; an increase of the space velocity has a positive effect on cooling capacity and a negative effect on COP.     

Effect of storage tanks on solar-powered absorption chiller cooling system performance

Thermal storage, low power tariff at night, and low nocturnal temperature can be used in synergy to reduce the cooling costs of the solar-powered absorption chiller cooling systems. This study aims to reduce the required cooling capacity of an absorption chiller (ACH) powered by a solar parabolic trough collector (PTC) and a backup fuel boiler by integrating thermal storage tanks. The thermal performance of the system is simulated for a building that is cooled for 14 h/day. The system uses 1000 m² PTC with 1020 kW ACH. Chilled water storage (CHWS) and cooling water storage (CWS) effects on the system performance for different operation hours per day of the ACH under Izmir (Turkey) and Phoenix (USA) weather conditions are analyzed. When the ACH operates 14 h/day as the load for both systems and both locations, the variations of the solar collector efficiency and the cooling load to heat input ratio remain less than 4% after the modifications. From the addition of CHWS to the reference system, a parametric study consisting of changing the ACH operation hours per day shows that the required cooling capacity of the ACH can be reduced to 34%. The capacity factor of the ACH is improved from its reference value of 41% up to 96%.     

Experimental study on improved two-bed silica gel–water adsorption chiller

A novel silica gel–water adsorption chiller with two chambers has been built in Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU). This chiller combines two single bed systems (basic system) without any vacuum valves. One adsorber, one condenser and one evaporator are housed in the same chamber to constitute one adsorption/desorption unit. In this work, the chiller is developed and improved. The improved chiller is composed of three vacuum chambers: two adsorption/desorption vacuum chambers (the same structure as the former chiller) and one heat pipe working vacuum chamber. The evaporators of these two adsorption/desorption units are combined by a heat pipe. So, no valves are installed in the chilled water sub system and one vacuum valve connects the two adsorption/desorption chambers together to improve its performance. The performance of the chiller is tested. As the results, the refrigerating capacity and the COP of the chiller are, respectively, 8.69 kW and 0.388 for the heat source temperature of 82.5 °C, the cooling water temperature of 30.4 °C and the chilled water outlet temperature of 11.9 °C. For a chilled water outlet temperature of 16.5 °C, the COP reaches 0.432, while the refrigerating capacity is near 11 kW. There is an improvement of at least 12% for the COP compared with the former chillers.