Performance improvement by mass-heat recovery of an innovative adsorption air-conditioner driven by 50–80 °C hot water

• Micro-porous silica gel was used as adsorbent in one novel adsorption chiller, which is driven by 50–80 °C hot water.
• The mass recovery can improve adsorption capacity of the chiller significantly.
• The heat recovery can improve COP significantly.
• The cooling capacity and COP can arrive 15.8 kW and 0.53 (with MH recovery).
• The cooling capacity and COP are 14.6 kW and 0.47 (without MH recovery).

The processes of mass recovery and heat recovery in one micro-porous silica gel–water solar adsorption air conditioner were investigated. The influences to MH recovery (mass–heat recovery) performances under different working conditions were studied. The result shows when the hot water temperature is lower, longer mass recovery time is needed for the re-adsorption of the cold adsorbent bed and re-desorption of the hot adsorbent bed. Meanwhile, the process of heat recovery can recover heat to improve Coefficient of Performance (COP) of the system. When the hot water inlet temperature (Th,i), cooling water inlet temperature (Tc,i) and chilled water outlet temperature (Tch,o) are about 55 °C, 26 °C, 16 °C, the COP is 0.31 in the cycle with 180 s of mass recovery while the COP is 0.27 in the cycle with 90 s of mass recovery. When the Th,i, Tc,i and Tch,o are 80 °C, 30 °C and 15 °C, the cooling capacity and COP are 15.3 kW and 0.5 in the cycle without heat recovery, while in the cycle with 30 s of heat recovery, the cooling capacity, COP and specific volumetric power can arrive 15.8 kW, 0.53 and 20.6 kW m−3.

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