Effective Use of Low Temperature Heat Sources by Using Confined State of Water in Various Microporous Absorbents

摘要

Energy saving is the most serious issue to sustain our life on the earth. Despite the limiting energy resources, we have been wasting enormous amount of heat from various places, such as factories, transportation systems and even houses, private or public. The exposed heat is difficult to use due to the nature of low temperature and low energy density, although the total amount is very large. We therefore lose much electric energy only to fell room temperatures by few degrees in summer, although electricity should be used for any other higher-grade objects. Zeolite heat pump was proposed initially for effective use of low grade-energy for cooling, such as air-conditioning and refrigeration, but few practical application have been developed so far. Here, I emphasize that we have no other way except for using absorbing states of vapor in micro-porous materials for effective energy-conversion from the low grade-energy. The zeolite-water combination may be one of the most prospective pair for the object, because the energy state of water molecules in zeolites is so low even at the room temperatures as to be comparable to that of ice at 0K. Zeolite heat pump system should be recognized as a mechanism to extract energy from the low entropy state of zeolitic water.