Study on an activated carbon fiber–ethanol adsorption chiller: Part II – performance evaluation

Abstract

This article presents the performance evaluation of a two-bed, activated carbon fiber (ACF)–ethanol adsorption chiller, which has been studied on the basis of the transient modelling developed by the same authors [B.B. Saha, I.I. El-Sharkawy, A. Chakraborty, S. Koyama, Study on an activated carbon fiber–ethanol adsorption chiller: Part I – system description and modelling, International Journal of Refrigeration, submitted for publication]. This innovative adsorption chiller, where pitch based ACF of type A-20 is taken as the adsorbent utilizes effectively the low-temperature waste heat sources of temperature between 60 and 95 °C along with a cooling source at ambient temperature. We have found that, regardless of the initial mass distribution, the ACF–ethanol adsorption chiller is able to achieve the same cyclic-steady-state within three half cycles or 1890 s. Simulation results show that the optimum COP values are obtained at driving source temperatures between 80 and 85 °C and makes this chiller suitable for low-temperature waste heat recovery with relatively higher performance.