Novel experimental methodology for the characterization of thermodynamic performance of advanced working pairs for adsorptive heat transformers

This paper presents a novel experimental protocol for the evaluation of the thermodynamic performance of working pairs for application in adsorption heat pumps and chillers.The proposed approach is based on the experimental measurements of the main thermo-physical parameters of adsorbent pairs, by means of a DSC/TG apparatus modified to work under saturated vapour conditions, able to measure the ads-/desorption isobars and heat flux as well as the adsorbent specific heat under real boundary conditions. Such kind of activity allows to characterize the thermodynamic performance of an adsorbent pair allowing the estimation of the thermal Coefficient Of Performance (COP) both for heating and cooling applications, only relying on experimental values.The experimental uncertainty of the method has been estimated to be around 2%, for the COP evaluation.In order to validate the proposed procedure, a first test campaign has been carried out on the commercial adsorbent material, AQSOA-Z02, produced by MPI (Mitsubishi Plastics Inc.), while water was used as refrigerant.The proposed experimental methodology will be applied on several other adsorbent materials, either already on the market or still under investigation, in order to get an easy and reliable method to compare thermodynamic performance of adsorptive working pairs.