Experimental Study of an Automobile Exhaust Heat-Driven Adsorption Air-Conditioning Laboratory Prototype by Using Palm Activated Carbon-Methanol

摘要

Adsorption air-cooling systems powered by waste heat or solar heat can help to reduce the use of ozone-depleting substances, such as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydro-chlorofluoro-carbons (HCFCs). In recent years, these systems have faced increasing interest in many fields because they are quiet, long lasting, inexpensive to maintain, and environmentally friendly. This paper presents a laboratory prototype of an automobile adsorption air-conditioning system powered by exhaust heat, which has been successfully built and tested in the laboratory. The working pair used is a locally produced palm-derived activated carbon with methanol. Experimental results obtained show that, by having a cycle time of 20 minutes, an average chilled-air temperature of around 73.0℉ (22.6℃) is achieved when the cooling coil temperatures fell between 49℉ to 58℉(9.5℃ to 14.7℃). The coefficient of performance (COP) and specific cooling power (SCP) of this prototype are approximately 0.19 and 614 Btu/h·lb (396.6 Wkg~(-1)), respectively.