Advanced solid sorption air conditioning modules using monolithic carbon–ammonia pair

Abstract

In order to design and build a low cost rotary regenerative adsorption air conditioning system using monolithic carbon–ammonia in a multiple bed design, three single module configurations have been tested. The basic single module named MODULAR1-0.0 consists of stainless steel tube 12.7 mm in diameter, wall thickness 0.25 mm and 600 mm long and contains about 2.6 mm layer of monolithic carbon (about 40 g) from WaterLink Sutcliffe Carbons Ltd. The far end of the module (about 230 mm long) is the evaporator–condenser (receiver). An inert material (PTFE) is inserted between the receiver and the generator as an adiabatic section that reduces the longitudinal conduction between them. From the basic module, two other module configurations (MODULAR2-0.125 and MODULAR2-0.3) are considered with external aluminium fins to improve the heat transfer capacity of the module: each consists of two basic single modules with both generator and receiver fitted with rectangular aluminium fins. This paper is focused on detailed design, construction and testing of modules. The experimental results are presented and discussed. At typical conditions ( T G=100 °C, T C=30 °C and −5 °C< T E<20 °C), MODULAR2-0.125 has provided the best performance with a maximum specific cooling of about 0.600 kW kg −1 carbon which is 30% and 60% better than the performance of MODULAR2-0.3 and 2-MODULAR1-0.0 respectively. The typical COP of each module is about 0.20 without regeneration and about 0.50 with regeneration.