Development and performance studies of an air cooled two-stage multi-bed silica-gel + water adsorption system

• Cooling cum desalination with thermal compression using two-stage silica-gel + water adsorption system is presented.
• Design features and constructional details of various components of the laboratory scale system are described.
• Start-up transience and cyclic steady state characteristics of air cooled the adsorption system are elucidated.
• The study reveals that an optimum cycle time exists for maximising the throughput from the system.
• Near identical specific throughput from the system is observed for identical beds, irrespective of the mode of operation.

A two-stage 4-bed/stage silica-gel + water adsorption system is developed for combined cooling and desalination, which adopts air cooled heat rejection obviating the disadvantages of cooling towers. Each stage has four adsorbers: three beds with identical design and one bed having a marginally different design. The present paper describes the design features and constructional details of the various components of this system. The results presented herein focus only on the performance of the identical beds. The start-up transience of various components namely, the evaporator, the adsorber beds and the condenser, is presented in detail. The cyclic steady state characteristics of the adsorption system in 2- and 3-bed modes of operation are compared. Near identical specific throughput from the system is observed irrespective of the mode of operation.