Experimental results of a compact thermally driven cooling system based on metal hydrides

In this paper a detailed experimental analysis of a metal hydride based cooling system is presented. For the high temperature side an AB5 type alloy (LmNi4.91Sn0.15) was chosen, whereas an AB2 type alloy (Ti0.99Zr0.01V0.43Fe0.09Cr0.05Mn1.5) is used for the low temperature side. Due to very good heat and also mass transfer characteristics (among others, large heat transfer surface area) of the utilized capillary tube bundle reaction bed, very short half-cycle times in the order of 100 s have been reached. Consequently, the specific cooling power of the system is up to 780 W per kg desorbing metal hydride – depending on the temperature boundary conditions. The system was experimentally analyzed for different cooling and ambient temperatures, whereas the heating temperature was fixed to 130 °C.