Review of coupled heat and mass transfer studies in falling film absorbers: Modeling, experimental and thermodynamic approaches.

Absorption machines are frequently used for cooling and heating. However, they must be improved to achieve high performance at a lower cost. Being a key component of these machines, this paper focuses on the absorber and specifically on falling film absorber configuration due to its compactness and simple geometry. This paper reviews the different analytical and numerical approaches used to analyze the thermal, mass and hydrodynamic phenomena occurring in falling films for both smooth and wavy-laminar regimes. It shows the significant progress made since 2000 in terms of mathematical models developed and coupling effect resolution. Research using thermodynamics to identify, locate and quantify the entropy generation sources in falling film absorbers is also presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]