Evaporator Performance for Water Refrigerant Adsorption Cooling System

Abstract

Adsorption Cooling System gives an alternative to the commercial vapor compression refrigeration cycles due to their benefits of having a very environmentally friendly and promising energy-saving system. An adsorption cooling system consists of four main components which are thecondenser, evaporator, expansion valve, and adsorption bed for the system to effectively function. One of the factors that affect the efficiency of the system is the performance of the evaporator itself as the system operates at sub-atmospheric pressure and the performance is mediocre when using conventional evaporators. Due to the low-pressure condition, hydrostatic pressure may affect the saturated temperature of the water refrigerant in a flooded type evaporator. Therefore, in this study, the performance of the evaporator was investigated based on the water height variation. The highest heat transfer coefficient and evaporation heat transfer rate are achieved when the water is set at the heat exchanger tube diameter level. Furthermore, 0.1 kg of silica gel adsorbent is used to obtain the maximum of 250 W/kg of Specific Cooling Power when the heat transfer fluid is set to 20 ºC.