Physical and operating conditions effects on silica gel/water adsorption chiller performance

Adsorption refrigeration systems are commercially developed due to the need of replacing the conventional systems which utilise environmentally harmful refrigerants and consume high grade electrical power. This paper presents the key equations necessary for developing a novel empirical lumped analytical simulation model for commercial 450 kW two-bed silica gel/water adsorption chiller incorporating mass and heat recovery schemes. The adsorption chiller governing equations were solved using MATLAB® platform integrated with REFPROP® to determine the working fluids thermo-physical properties. The simulation model predicted the chiller performance within acceptable tolerance and hence it was used as an evaluation and optimisation tool. The simulation model was used for investigating the effect of changing fin spacing on chiller performance where changing fin spacing from its design value to minimum permissible value increased chiller cooling capacity by 3.0% but decreased the COP by 2.3%. Furthermore, the effect of generation temperature lift on chiller performance and the feasibility of using it as a load control tool will be discussed. Genetic Algorithm optimisation tool was used to determine the optimum cycle time corresponding to maximum cooling capacity, where using the new cycle time increased the chiller cooling capacity by 8.3%.     

Theoretical research of a silica gel–water adsorption chiller in a micro combined cooling,heating and power (CCHP) system

A novel micro CCHP system, which is based on a two bed silica gel–water adsorption chiller, is constructed in this work. To reveal the chiller characteristic in this system, a transient model of the adsorption chiller is developed. According to the comparison of the simulated results and experimental data, the presented model shows a good performance in predicting the chiller performance, with both stable and variable heat source temperature. With the analysis of simulated results, it is found that the cooling capacity and the coefficient of performance (COP) of the chiller are influenced significantly by the average value and variation rate of electric load, as well as the average value of cooling load. The water tank also shows a great effect on the chiller performance. To get better performance of the chiller, the water tank should be adopted when the electric load is low or its variation rate is positive, and should not be utilized when the electric load is high or its variation rate is negative. A 500 L water tank is recommended in order to get better performance and acceptable start-up time. Furthermore, to get better performance as well as higher security, a cold accumulator should be adopted.     

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%.     

Waste heat driven silica gel/water adsorption cooling in trigeneration

A low-grade waste heat driven solid/vapour adsorption chiller has been successfully designed and tested. A simple model was developed to aid the design and predict the performances. The system comprised two identical sorption reactors operating out of phase in order to ensure continuous cold production. One sorption reactor consisted of six commercially available automotive plate/fin heat exchangers in which silica gel grains were accommodated between the fins. The system was tested as to the power delivered at 12 °C and the power density. The average cooling power was 3.6 kW. This is only 72% of the design value and can be largely attributed to the lower heat transfer fluid flow rate through the sorbent reactor. The thermal efficiency, COP, was 0.62 and the power density was 17 kW/m³ for the system as a whole. Higher power densities are possible. At present, the adsorption chiller is integrated in a prototype trigeneration system, which is tested at CRF’s Eco-building in Turin.     

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.     

Design and performance of the solar-powered floor heating system in a green building

In the green building of Shanghai Research Institute of Building Science, the evacuated tubular solar collectors with a total area of 150 m² were installed to provide heating for the covered area of 460 m². The floor heating coil pipes were made of high-quality pure copper with the dimension of Φ 12 × 0.7 mm. Under typical weather condition of Shanghai, the average heating capacity was 25.04 kW during the working hours from 9:00 to 17:00, which was sufficient to keep indoor thermal environment. The average electric COP of the floor heating system was 19.76 during the system operation. Compared with the widely used air-source heat pump heating systems with the electric COP of 3.5 in Shanghai, the solar-powered floor heating system shows great potential in energy conservation in winter. With respect to the whole heating period, the solar fraction was 56%. According to the performance analysis of the system with ambient parameters, it was observed that the system performance could be greatly enhanced with the increase of daily solar insolation. However, the system performance varied slightly with average ambient temperature. Compared with average ambient temperature, daily solar insolation had a more distinct influence on the performance of the solar-powered floor heating system.     

Research on a combined adsorption heating and cooling system

A combined cycle capable of heating and adsorption refrigeration is proposed, and the experimental prototype has been installed. The system consists of a heater, a water bath, an activated carbon–methanol adsorption bed and a ice box. This system has been tested with electric heating, and has been found that with 61 MJ heating, the 120 kg water in the bath can be heated up from 22 to 92 °C meanwhile 9 kg ice of −1.5 °C is made. The calculated COP_system is 0.0591 and COP_cycle is 0.41. After reconstruction to a real hybrid household water heater–refrigerator, when 55 MJ heating is added to 120 kg 21 °C water, and the condensing temperature is controlled at about 30 °C, the result is the 4 kg water contained inside the methanol refrigerant evaporator was iced to −2 °C, the cooling capacity of the ice and the refrigerant in the evaporator will maintain the 100 l cold box for about three days below 5 °C. The experiments show the potentials of the application of the solar powered hybrid water heater and refrigerator. Theoretical simulation has been done, which is in good agreement with experimental results. This research shows that the hybrid solar water heating and ice making is reasonable, and the combined cycle of heating and cooling is meaningful for real applications of adsorption systems.     

风冷太阳能双级水喷射制冷空调系统性能分析

对额定制冷量为12.3 kW的风冷太阳能双级水喷射制冷空调系统进行了变工况性能分析。该系统的制冷量随室内温度升高而增大,随环境温度升高而减小,随太阳辐照度增强而增大;COP的变化与制冷量的变化类似,所不同的是COP随着太阳辐照度的增强先迅速增大,当太阳辐照度增大到一定程度后,COP基本保持稳定。在室内温度不低于27℃,室外温度不高于38℃,太阳辐照度不低于500 W/m2的条件下,系统的制冷量为7.7~32 kW,COP为0.082~0.107。     

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.     

Experimental and theoretical performance analysis of the silica gel,LiCl with water,methanol multifunction adsorption system

The world is facing the ever‐worsening issues of global warming. The results show that the physical‐/chemical‐adsorbent water can improve the adsorption capacity of 1.22 kg/kg. If water is used as the adsorbate, the adsorbent has a serious issue of corrosion. So, methanol is utilized. However, methanol just can be heated by low‐temperature heat, because methanol will be broken down in above 140°C adsorption system. The multifunction adsorption system can produce one cold effect output and two power generation outputs. The results show that the silica gel/LiCl‐methanol multifunction adsorption system has a higher cooling exergy efficiency of 0.25 and a higher total system exergy efficiency of 0.87 compared with that of the silica gel‐water system.     

An efficient solar-powered adsorption chiller and its application in low-temperature grain storage

A novel solar-powered adsorption cooling system for low-temperature grain storage has been built, which consists of a solar-powered water heating system, a silica gel–water adsorption chiller, a cooling tower and a fan coil unit. The adsorption chiller is composed of two identical adsorption units, each of them containing an adsorber, a condenser, and an evaporator/receiver. The two water evaporators have been incorporated into one methanol evaporator by the use of the concept of a gravity heat pipe. In order to improve the system efficiency and achieve continuous cooling production, the adsorbers are operated out-of-phase, and heat and mass recovery processes have been used. During the period from July to September of 2004, the system was put into experimental operation to cool the headspace (i.e., the air volume above the grain) of a grain bin. Three months of operation showed promising performance. The chiller had a cooling power between 66 and 90 W per m² of collector surface, with a daily solar cooling coefficient of performance (COP_solar) ranging from 0.096 to 0.13. The electric cooling COP was between 2.6 and 3.4.     

Development of a solar-powered passive ejector cooling system

This paper describes the development of an ejector refrigeration system that is powered by solar thermal energy. The cooling system contains no active parts and is therefore deemed passive. Water is used as the refrigerant though other natural refrigerants could be used for lower temperature operation. A prototype system was built with a nominal cooling capacity of 7 kW. This system was laboratory tested and then installed in an existing office in Loughborough, UK. The system has operated with a COP of up to 0.3 at this location. The system is also able to provide up to 20 kW of heating to the building during the winter.     

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.     

Heat-pump/energy-store using silica gel and water as a working pair

The possibilty of using silica gel and water as a reversible pair, in a thermochemical heat-pump/energy-store has been studied theoretically and experimentally during both heating and cooling modes. With silica gel absorbing water by 25±2% of the dry silica gel's weight, the heat of adsorption and the heat of wetting of 2712.43±30 kJ/kg SiO₂ and 94.43± 15 kJ/kg SiO₂ have been achieved respectively. The concentration rate for the two reaction pair was investigated and a general relationship that governed the adsorption rate with time has been deduced.     

Greenhouse heating and cooling using aquifer water

An aquifer coupled cavity flow heat exchanger system (ACCFHES) was designed using underground aquifer water for the heating as well as cooling of a composite climatic greenhouse. The performance of ACCFHES was experimentally evaluated for a full winter and a summer season. The ACCFHES makes use of constant temperature aquifer water (24 °C) available at an agricultural field through an irrigation tube well for heating in winter nights and cooling in summer days. The results showed that the average greenhouse room air temperature was maintained 7–9 °C above the outside air during extreme winter nights and 6–7 °C below the outside air in extreme summer days, and temperature fluctuations inside the greenhouse also decreased daily. The average relative humidity (RH) inside the greenhouse also decreased by 10–12% in the winter and increased by more than double in the extreme summer conditions as compared to the outside conditions. A comparison of economic feasibility of the ACCFHES coupled greenhouse was also conducted with conventional greenhouse and open field condition based on the yield of Capsicum annum. The ACCFHES was also compared economically with other existing heating/cooling technologies such as earth-to-air heat exchanger system (EAHES), ground air collector, evaporative cooling using foggers and fan & pad system in terms of net present worth (NPW) and pay back period. It was observed that the NPW of the ACCFHES coupled greenhouse was much higher as compared to the conventional greenhouse and open field condition. The payback period of the ACCFHES coupled greenhouse was the lowest among all other existing heating/cooling systems.     

System performance and economic analysis of solar-assisted cooling/heating system

The long-term system simulation and economic analysis of solar-assisted cooling/heating system (SACH-2) was carried out in order to find an economical design. The solar heat driven ejector cooling system (ECS) is used to provide part of the cooling load to reduce the energy consumption of the air conditioner installed as the base-load cooler. A standard SACH-2 system for cooling load 3.5 kW (1 RT) and daily cooling time 10 h is used for case study. The cooling performance is assumed only in summer seasons from May to October. In winter season from November to April, only heat is supplied. Two installation locations (Taipei and Tainan) were examined.It was found from the cooling performance simulation that in order to save 50% energy of the air conditioner, the required solar collector area is 40 m² in Taipei and 31 m² in Tainan, for COP_j = 0.2. If the solar collector area is designed as 20 m², the solar ejector cooling system will supply about 17–26% cooling load in Taipei in summer season and about 21–27% cooling load in Tainan. Simulation for long-term performance including cooling in summer (May–October) and hot water supply in winter (November–April) was carried out to determine the monthly-average energy savings. The corresponding daily hot water supply (with 40 °C temperature rise of water) for 20 m² solar collector area is 616–858 L/day in Tainan and 304–533 L/day in Taipei.The economic analysis shows that the payback time of SACH-2 decreases with increasing cooling capacity. The payback time is 4.8 years in Tainan and 6.2 years in Taipei when the cooling capacity >10 RT. If the ECS is treated as an additional device used as a protective equipment to avoid overheating of solar collectors and to convert the excess solar heat in summer into cooling to reduce the energy consumption of air conditioner, the payback time is less than 3 years for cooling capacity larger than 3 RT.     

Design and performance of a solar-powered air-conditioning system in a green building

A solar-powered adsorption air-conditioning system was designed and installed in the green building of Shanghai Research Institute of Building Science. The system contained 150 m² solar collectors and two adsorption chillers with nominal refrigeration capacity of 8.5 kW. Based on performance characteristics of the adsorption chiller, the operation mode of the solar-powered air-conditioning system was optimized by maintaining a phase shift of 540 s between the two adsorption chillers. Thereafter, the whole system realized stable operation by the balance of heat consumption and refrigeration output. From June to August of 2005, the solar-powered air-conditioning system continuously ran between 9:00 and 17:00. The operation performance of the system under representative working condition showed that the average refrigeration output of the solar-powered air-conditioning system was 15.3 kW during an 8 h operation and the maximum value exceeded 20 kW. Solar fraction for the system in summer was 71.7%, which corresponded to the designed cooling load (15 kW). Compared with the ambient temperature, it was deduced that solar radiant intensity had a more distinct influence on the performance of solar-powered air-conditioning system.     

Simulation of solar-powered absorption cooling system

With developing technology and the rapid increase in world population, the demand for energy is ever increasing. Conventional energy will not be enough to meet the continuously increasing need for energy in the future. In this case, renewable energy sources will become important. Solar energy is a very important energy source because of its advantages. Instead of a compressor system, which uses electricity, an absorption cooling system, using renewable energy and kinds of waste heat energy, may be used for cooling. In this study, a solar-powered, single stage, absorption cooling system, using a water–lithium bromide solution, is simulated. A modular computer program has been developed for the absorption system to simulate various cycle configurations and solar energy parameters for Antalya, Turkey. So, the effects of hot water inlet temperatures on the coefficient of performance (COP) and the surface area of the absorption cooling components are studied. In addition, reference temperatures which are the minimum allowable hot water inlet temperatures are determined and their effect on the fraction of the total load met by non–purchased energy (FNP) and the coefficient of performance are researched. Also, the effects of the collector type and storage tank mass are investigated in detail.     

Heat exchanger design effect on the system performance of silica gel adsorption refrigeration systems

This article presents a numerical investigation of the heat exchanger design effect on the performance of closed cycle, two-bed adsorption cooling systems with silica gel as adsorbent and water as refrigerant. It is well known that the shorter the cycle time, lower is the performance (cooling capacity and coefficient of performance). A long cycle time is responsible for lower cooling capacity. In this study, a non-dimensional switching frequency, which is inversely proportional to the cycle time, is defined and an optimum switching frequency is derived based on parametric analysis. The effect of other heat exchanger design parameters such as adsorbent number of transfer unit (NTU), bed Biot number (Bi), the heat exchanger aspect ratio (Ar) and the ratio of fluid channel radius to the adsorbent thickness (Hr), on the system performance has been investigated. The results show that the switching frequency ω, bed NTU, Ar and bed Bi have strong effects on the system performance. It is also seen that for a given set of design parameters, the system has an optimum switching frequency and the system performance will be declined seriously if the system is not operated at optimum switching frequency. The optimum switching frequency increases with the increase of NTU, Hr and with the decrease of Bi and Ar.