Novel sorption materials for solar heating and cooling

Heat transformation based on adsorption/desorption of water in microporous adsorbents has been considered for the application as adsorption chiller (ACS), adsorption heat pump (AHP) or thermochemical storage (TCS) since the 1980s. Unfortunately, most of the available adsorbents like zeolites were not optimized for the use in these processes as they originally had been developed for gas separation or catalysis processes. Within the last decade, intensive research on adsorbents yielded in improved and very promising new sorption materials with an enhanced adsorption capacity. This work gives a broad overview on current developments on materials including the new class of metal-organic frameworks for the use in adsorption processes for heat storage and transformation. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.