Experimental research on novel adsorption chiller driven by low grade heat source

Abstract: A novel silica gel-water adsorption chiller is developed. This chiller consists of three vacuum chambers: two adsorption/desorption (or evaporation/condensation) vacuum chambers and one heat pipe working vacuum chamber. In this chiller, only one vacuum valve is installed between the two adsorption/desorption vacuum chambers to improve its performance when it is driven by a low temperature heat source. The operational reliability of the chiller is highly improved because of fewer moving parts. In this work, the performance of the chiller is experimentally tested under a low grade heat source, such as 55–67°C. The test results show that the performance of this chiller is satisfying when it is driven by a low grade heat source, such as 65°C, and the cooling capacity (or refrigeration capacity) will reach about 5kW when the hot water temperature is 65°C, the cooling water temperature is 30.5°C and the chilled water inlet temperature is 15.1°C. The test results confirm that this kind of adsorption chiller can be effectively driven by a low grade heat source. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]