On the application of adsorber plate heat exchangers in thermally driven chillers; An experimental and analytical study

The effect of both heat and mass transfer characteristic lengths (HTCL, MTCL) of two different adsorber plate heat exchangers (APHE), for application in an adsorption chiller, on the adsorption and desorption kinetics is investigated. Three representative test frames (TF1-TF3) are prepared to examine small-scale adsorbent samples of the microporous silica gel (Siogel of Oker-Chemie, Germany) applying the volumetric large-temperature-jump methodology at different operating conditions. Based on the obtained kinetic data, an analytical model has been developed to predict the specific cooling power (SCP) and the coefficient of performance (COP) of a single-bed adsorption chiller comprising the studied APHEs. It turned out that, within the tested range of HTCL and MTCL, it can be concluded that, the adsorption kinetics are mainly influenced by the MTCL, while the desorption kinetics are dominated by the HTCL of the adsorbent domain. Applying Siogel as loose pellets inside a newly introduced APHE results in SCPs of 423.3 and 182.7 W⋅kg⁻¹, at the evaporator temperatures of 15 °C and 5 °C, respectively. Herein, the condenser and adsorber-end temperatures amount to 30 °C and the desorption-end temperature to 90 °C. The corresponding COPs amount to 0.50 and 0.40, respectively, which represent quite promising results for further design optimizations.