Transient behavior of a cylindrical adsorbent bed during the adsorption process

• Dynamic behavior of an adsorbent bed during the adsorption process is investigated.
• Silica gel–water pair is chosen to be an adsorbent–adsorbate working pair.
• A transient two dimensional local thermal non-equilibrium model is developed.
• Heat transfer resistances have a considerable influence on the adsorption dynamic.
• Cooling capacity increases with increasing Pev and Tds and decreasing Pco and Tc.

A transient two dimensional local thermal non-equilibrium model is developed to investigate the influences of heat transfer and operating parameters on the dynamic behavior of a cylindrical adsorbent bed during the adsorption process. Local volume averaging method is used to drive the macro scale governing conservation equations from the micro scale ones. In the model, linear driving force model and Darcy’s equation are considered to account for the resistances to internal and external mass transfer, respectively. Silica gel–water pair widely used in the adsorption cooling systems is chosen to be an adsorbent–adsorbate working pair. The parameters of interest are convective heat transfer coefficient, solid phase thermal conductivity, bed thickness, evaporator pressure, condenser pressure, driving heat source temperature and cooling source temperature. It is found that amount of refrigerant circulated through the system increases with increasing evaporator pressure-driving heat source temperature and decreasing condenser pressure-cooling source temperature. The duration of adsorption process is more sensitive to heat transfer resistances than to mass transfer resistances. The conductive and convective resistances need to be reduced to reach the equilibrium conditions in a short period of time and hence to have a better specific cooling power.