Low Temperature Waste Heat Driven Refrigeration Cycle

This work explores the utilization of alternative refrigerants to the conventional silica gel + water adsorption pair for the adsorption chiller cycle. Water as the working fluid in the cycle limits the cooling temperatures to above 0°C due to its triple point. The activated carbon Maxsorb III is thus considered as the adsorbent due to its high micro-porous characteristics which lead to higher uptake values. The isotherms of this adsorbent with natural refrigerant Propane, n-butane as well as refrigerants HFC-134a, R507a and R-32 are fitted to the Dubinin-Astakhov equation and the parameters tabulated. With these isotherms, the performances of these pairs with respect to their Specific Cooling Effects (SCE) are compared for assorted cooling temperature, ambient temperature and waste temperature requirements. It was found that the natural refrigerant propane exhibits the most favorable operational conditions when the required cooling temperature is below 0°C. A mathematical model is thus developed to predict the cycle of the propane cycle and is found to show a good fit to the experimental results.