Performance investigation of adsorber bed heat exchanger by CFD simulation for small scale adsorption heat pumps

摘要

Adsorption heat pump systems are drawing more and more attention nowadays due to its environment-friendly operation and energy saving capability. Although the system is commercialized in the market but could not achieve substantial productivity compared to conventional vapor compression system. Thus performance improvement is a mandatory requirement for realizing wide-spread commercialization and in doing so experimental testing can incur a huge operating cost. In this regard, CFD simulation can be a handy tool for analyzing adsorption heat pump system performance. In our research, a finned tube type adsorber bed and activated carbon-ethanol working pair are considered, and the 2D axisymmetric heat transfer and mass transfer simulations are performed using the Ansys-Fluent software v. 18.1. Moreover, almost identical experimental conditions are provided for the simulation to validate the simulation results. In the results section, temperature and pressure profiles are presented and validated by comparing with the experimental results. Specific cooling power and COP were evaluated and found 426.09 W/kg and 0.51 respectively. This CFD model will allow performance optimization of the system for different adsorber heat exchanger geometry and operating conditions.