Evaluation of Performance of Thermal and Electrical Hybrid Adsorption Chiller Cycles with Mechanical Booster Pumps

Large amounts of waste heat below 100oC from the industrial sector are re-leased into the atmosphere. It has been suggested that energy system efficiency can be increased with adsorption chillers. However, the cooling power and coefficient of performance (COP) of conventional adsorption chillers significantly decrease with the desorption temperature. In this paper, we proposed a mechanical booster pump (MBP)-assisted adsorption chiller cycle, and evaluated its performances. In the cycle, a MBP was incorporated into a zeolite-water-type adsorption chiller for facilitating water vapor transportation between an adsorber and an evaporator/condenser. We have experimentally studied the effect of the input electrical power of MBP on the performances of adsorption chiller cycle. It has been demonstrated that the heat input achieved by using MBP at the desorption temperature of 50oC was 1.6 times higher than that of without MBP at the desorption temperature of 60oC. And the increase of pump power was found to be effective in increasing the heat input. Therefore, it was confirmed that the operation range of desorption temperature, which can be generated by using the waste heat, was extended and the cooling power was increased directly by using MBP.