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Adsorption Chillers Driven by Low-Grade Automotive Waste Heat
Adsorption Chillers Driven by Low-Grade Automotive Waste Heat
Chillers Driven by LowGrade Automotive Waste Heat
Adsorption Chillers Driven by LowGrade Automotive Waste Heat
Overview
Adsorption chillers are batchwise devices. Solid adsorbent is heated to release, or
desorb, adsorbed phase refrigerant, which is then condensed, expanded to a low
pressure, and evaporated at a low temperature to provide cooling. Evaporated
refrigerant is adsorbed by a second bed. The desorbing and adsorbing beds switch
roles periodically to regenerate the system. This research program comprises
modeling of adsorption at the system, component and particlelevels to elucidate the
underlying transport processes and yield better system designs.
Background and Motivation
Thermally driven adsorption heat pumps offer simple configurations insensitive to
vibration and orientation, and are applicable to a wide variety of systems including
mobile cooling. Waste heat from an engine heats a desorber to thermally compress
refrigerant, obviating the need for a shaftpowerintensive compressor, and increasing
fuel economy by up to 18% (Lambert and Jones, 2006). Most previous research in
mobile adsorption utilized hightemperature exhaust, which is generally above 400°C,
but despite the high source temperature, would need a large heat recovery device
limited by gas side heat transfer. In this work, engine coolant, at 90°C is used,
allowing direct integration of the desorber into the heat stream to reduce the number
and size of components.
SystemLevel: Transient Behavior
Timedependent, cyclic sorption processes in each bed are modeled in detail,
accounting for the thermal capacitances of the adsorbent, adsorbed refrigerant, and
heat exchanger material, tracking transient temperatures throughout the system.
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11/5/2015 Adsorption Chillers Driven by LowGrade Automotive Waste Heat
SystemLevel: Energy Recovery
Thermal energy from the desorbed bed can heat the adsorbed bed during
switching
Heated coolant is routed from the precooling bed to the preheating bed
Energy recovery requires little additional hardware
Efficiency enhancement of 14% is expected even without selecting an optimal
coolant flow rate
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ComponentLevel: Sorption Bed Heat Transfer
Round tube, platefin geometry provides large surface area to exchange heat
with the adsorbent and is robust enough to withstand harsh automotive
environments
Large number of closelyspaced fins yields high heat transfer rate, but more inert
material is thermally cycled behind high and low temperature.
Tradeoff between cooling power and COP
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11/5/2015 Adsorption Chillers Driven by LowGrade Automotive Waste Heat
ComponentLevel: Mass Transfer
Intrapartcile resistance dominates interparticle resistance for silica gelwater and
other pairs, evidenced by nearly identical uptakes for innear and outer nodes
with ideal heat transfer.
This research focuses on accurately modeling intraparticle diffusion
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11/5/2015 Adsorption Chillers Driven by LowGrade Automotive Waste Heat
ParticleLevel: Mass Transfer
In the literature, FIckian diffusion is almost always aproximated by the linear
driving force (LDF) equation.
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11/5/2015 Adsorption Chillers Driven by LowGrade Automotive Waste Heat
Our research has found the LDF to be inadequate for typical operating conditions
LDF error depends on the dimensionless cycle time and desoprtion temperature
Dimensionless halfcycle time for silica gel water is 0.009 to 0.03 (errors in this
region can be as high as 40%).
Finite volume solution the Fickian equation developed here yields much higher
accuracy in simulations
Conclusions and Ongoing Work
Heat recuperation improves thermal efficiency significantly.
Component Geometry has a large effect on COP and cooling power
The LDF approximation is inaccurate for conditions o interest in adsorption
refrigeration
Detailed Componentlevel models are now being merged with system level
models, and optimization of flow rates, cycle time, and micro channel
components will reduce system size.
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This work sponsored by: US Army (Ft. BelVoir) and Modine Manufacturing
Company
Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology, Copyright 2014
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