Design and experimental study of a silica gel-water adsorption chiller with modular adsorbers

• A silica gel-water adsorption chiller with modular adsorbers is developed.
• A system without any vacuum valves includes 2 sorption chambers and 8 valves.
• Optimal cooling, mass recovery and heat recovery times are 720 s, 40 s and 24 s, respectively.
• Cooling power, COP and SCP are 42.8 kW, 0.51 and 125 W kg−1, respectively, under typical conditions.

A silica gel-water adsorption chiller driven by low-grade heat is developed. System configuration without any vacuum valves includes two sorption chambers, a 4-valve hot/cooling water coupled circuit and a 4-valve chilled water circuit. Each sorption chamber is composed of one adsorber, one condenser and one evaporator. The design of this chiller, especially the design of modular adsorber, is suitable for low-cost industrial production. Efficient and reliable heat and mass recovery processes are also adopted. This chiller is tested under different conditions and it features the periodic variations of temperatures and cooling power. Through the experimental study, the optimal cooling time, mass recovery time and heat recovery time are 720 s, 40 s and 24 s, respectively. Besides, the obtained cooling power, COP and SCP are 42.8 kW, 0.51 and 125.0 W kg−1, respectively, under typical conditions of 86/30/11 °C hot water inlet/cooling water inlet/chilled water outlet temperatures, respectively.