Study on adsorption refrigeration cycle utilizing activated carbon fibers. Part 2. Cycle performance evaluation

Thermal heat driven adsorption systems have been gained considerable attention on the recent energy utilization trend. However, the drawbacks of these adsorption systems are their poor performance. It is urgently necessary to improve the system performance of the adsorption cycles. There are two major ways for the system performance improvement. One is to develop new adsorbent material well suited to low temperature heat regeneration. The other is to enhance heat and mass transfer in the adsorber/desorber heat exchanger. The objective of the paper is to investigate the system performance of an adsorption cycle. The cycle utilizes activated carbon fiber (ACF)/methanol as adsorbent/refrigerant pair. In this paper, specific cooling effect SCE and COP of the system are numerically evaluated from the adsorption equilibrium theory with different hot, cooling and chilled fluid inlet temperatures. It is confirmed that the influences of hot, cooling and chilled fluid inlet temperatures on the system performance are qualitatively similar to those of silica gel/water pair. Even though, the driving temperature levels of ACF/methanol and silica gel/water are different. There is an optimum condition for COP to reach at maximum for ACF/methanol pair. Particularly, the ACF/methanol system shows better performance with lower chilled fluid inlet temperature between -20 and 20 °C.