Adsorptive Air Conditioning Systems Driven by Low Temperature Energy Sources: Choice of the Working Pairs

Abstract

The performance of an adsorptive air-conditioning cycle driven by low temperature heat (80-85°C) was studied. The analysis rested on the Polanyi potential theory and took into account literature and author's experimental data on sorption equilibrium of various conventional and innovative adsorbents with water and methanol as working fluids. This adsorbent screening is aimed at evaluating the optimal working pairs for this application. The composite sorbent of methanol Lithium Chloride in mesoporous silica gel and the adsorbent of water FAM-Z02 were selected as challenging pairs for severe conditions of heat rejection typical for solar cooling in hot countries and air conditioning in cars.

Novel sorbents of ethanol “salt confined to porous matrix” for adsorptive cooling

“…Recently the new family of composites ''salt inside porous matrix'' (CSPMs) has been proposed for water and methanol sorption [20][21][22][23]. These materials were shown to combine advantages of solid porous adsorbents and liquid absorbents that result in high sorption capacity and low regeneration temperature.…”

Novel Materials for Adsorptive Heat Pumping and Storage: Screening and Nanotailoring of Sorption Properties

“…), and b) tailoring of new specific porous materials adapted just to vari- Fig. 11 Adsorption uptake vs. relative pressure of methanol (1, LiCl/silica; 3, LiBr/silica) (Gordeeva et al, 2007a(Gordeeva et al, , 2007b and NH 3 (2, CaCl 2 /vermiculite; 4, BaCl 2 /vermiculite) (Sharonov et al, 2006 …”

“…What only matter is that relation (1) should be valid and experimental data be obtained in the proper range of adsorption potential K 1 ≤ ∆F ≤ K 2 . Example of such fast screening of new and known adsorbents to be applied for air conditioning (AC) driven by low temperature heat (e.g., in vehicles) can be found in (Gordeeva et al, 2007a(Gordeeva et al, , 2007b). …”

“…Recently this nanotailoring approach has been extended to design novel composite adsorbents of methanol (Gordeeva et al, 2007a(Gordeeva et al, , 2007b and ammonia (Sharonov et al, 2006;Zhong et al, 2007). These materials appear to be able to exchange extra-ordinary large amount of adsorbent (up to 0.7 g/g) in very narrow temperature range (Figure 11).…”