Size Reduction of an Engine Waste-Heat Driven Air- Conditioner for Passenger Cars and Light-Duty Trucks

An engine waste-heat driven adsorption air conditioning system is studied to provide cooling for vehicles to improve fuel economy.It is critical to reduce the size of the system in order to adopt the technology in the applications of passenger cars and light-duty trucks. Thus, a modular design using the zeolite-water working pair is modeled to determine the size of the system for the cooling requirement of 3.5 kW during steady operation. The methods to reduce the module number and thus the size of the system are investigated and the control strategy to satisfy a high cooling requirement during thestart-up of the cooling period is also discussed.