Design and experimental study on a small-scale silica gel/water adsorption chiller with heat and mass recovery scheme for solar energy use

Silica gel/water adsorption refrigeration is regarded as a suitable solution for scalable solar cooling application in current stage but it needs necessary improvements in system design and performance. In this paper, authors present detailed thermal design of a small-scale silica gel-water adsorption chiller with heat and mass recovery scheme. Besides, the adsorption system is built for performance test under typical medium solar hot water temperature (70 degrees C). The results show the adsorption chiller can be stably and reliably operated while cooling power ranges from 2.2 to 3.6 kW. COP and SCP can reach 0.485 and 140.3 W center dot kg(-1), respectively, at 70/30/25 degrees C hot/cooling/chilled water inlet temperatures. The increase of cooling water inlet temperature from 26 degrees C to 32 degrees C causes 11.2 % and 28.9 % declines of COP and SCP, respectively. However, the increase of chilled water inlet temperature from 12 degrees C to 25 degrees C contributes to 61.1 % and 114.1 % increments of COP and SCP, respectively. In addition, inlet temperatures of both cooling and chilled water have greater influence on SCP than COP. Through this study, better understanding of adsorption chiller thermal design and its performance under medium solar hot water temperature is obtained.

Automated summary

In this study, a detailed thermal design of a small-scale silica gel-water adsorption chiller is presented, and its performance under typical medium solar hot water temperature is tested. The results show that the adsorption chiller can operate stably and reliably with cooling power ranging from 2.2 to 3.6 kW at a hot water temperature of 70 degrees C. This study provides a better understanding of the thermal design and performance of the adsorption chiller under medium solar hot water temperature.