Theoretical and experimental validation study on automotive air-conditioning based on heat pipe and LNG cold energy for LNG-fueled heavy vehicles

摘要

As a clean fuel, LNG has been used in heavy vehicles widely in China. Before reaching the engine for combustion, LNG store in a high vacuum multi-layer thermal insulation tank and need to be evaporated from its cryogenic state to natural gas. During the evaporation, the available cold energy of LNG has been calculated. The concept has been proposed that the separated type heat pipe technology is employed to utilize the available cold energy for automotive air-conditioning. The experiment has been conducted to validate the proposal. It is found that it is feasible to use the separated type heat pipe to convey the cold energy from LNG to automotive air-conditioning. And the cooling capacity of the automotive air-conditioning increase with the LNG consumption and air flow rate increasing.