Cyclic steady state performance of adsorption chiller with low regeneration temperature zeolite

Adsorption chillers are capable of utilizing inexpensive or free low grade thermal energy such as waste heat and concentrated solar thermal energy. Recently developed low regeneration temperature working pairs allow adsorption chillers to be driven by even lower temperature sources such as engine coolant and flat plate solar collectors. In this work, synthetic zeolite/water was implemented into a 3 kW adsorption chiller test facility driven by hot water at 70 °C. The zeolite was coated onto two fin-and-tube heat exchangers, with heat recovery employed between the two. Cyclic steady state parametric studies were experimentally conducted to evaluate the chiller's performance, resulting in a cooling coefficient of performance (COP) ranging from 0.1 to 0.6 at different operating conditions. Its performance was compared with published values for other low regeneration temperature working pairs. The physical limitations of the synthetic zeolite revealed by parametric study results were then discussed. A novel operating control strategy was proposed based on the unique characteristics of synthetic zeolite. In addition, a physics-based COP prediction model was derived to predict the performance of the chiller under equilibrium loading, and was validated by the experiment results. This analytical expression can be used to estimate the cyclic steady state performance for future studies.