Characteristics of FAM-Z01 compared to silica gels in the performance of an adsorption bed

Abstract

This paper investigates the characteristics of ferroaluminophosphate (FAM-Z01) compared to various types of conventional silica gels in the performance of an adsorption bed. FAM-Z01 has high potential to replace silica gel due to some key advantages, including a low heating temperature and high adsorption rate resulting from its S-shaped isotherm. We conducted a performance simulation on a fin-tube type adsorption bed with FAM-Z01/water and silica gel/water working pairs and compared the results in terms of coefficient of performance (COP) and specific cooling power (SCP). In the partial pressure range of typical operating condition for silica gels, there was no advantage with FAM-Z01. However, in the partial pressure range of 0.14<P/P0<0.29, which corresponds to a lower evaporation temperature (15°C→10°C) and lower heating temperature (80°C→70°C) compared to the typical operating condition for silica gels, the COP of FAM-Z01 was almost similar (3.72% decreased) to that of Type-RD silica gel, while the SCP was significantly increased by 35.0%. This indicates that without a change of system efficiency, FAM-Z01/water has a high cooling capacity with small size as compared to Type-RD silica gel/water. This confirms that the adsorbent FAM-Z01 has a high potential to address one of the adsorption chiller’s disadvantages, i.e., system size.