Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265

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Applied Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/apenergy

Influence of the operational conditions on the performance of a

chemisorption chiller driven by hot water between 65 C and 80 C
Rogrio Gomes de Oliveira a,, Daniel Joo Generoso b
a
Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Ararangu Cmpus, Laboratory of Applied Thermal Science (LABCITEA), R. Pedro Joo Pereira, 150, Araragu, SC 88905-120, Brazil
b
Federal Institute of Santa Catarina (IFSC), Ararangu Cmpus, Av. XV de Novembro, 61, Araragu, SC 88905-112, Brazil

h i g h l i g h t s g r a p h i c a l a b s t r a c t

Design and construction of a

chemisorption chiller driven by hot
water between 65 C and 80 C.

The influence of the operation
conditions on the COP and cooling
power are presented.

Heat and mass recovery are effective
to improve COP.

Minimum chilled water temperature
of 4 C using heat source at 70 C.

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: We designed, built and experimentally assessed the cooling power and the coefficient of performance
Received 22 June 2015 (COP) of a chemisorption chiller that used a consolidated composite made of NaBr impregnated in
Received in revised form 25 September 2015 expanded graphite as sorbent and ammonia as refrigerant. The influence of the operation conditions
Accepted 6 October 2015
on the COP and the cooling power was calculated through the values of inlet and outlet water tempera-
ture and water mass flow across the chillers heat exchangers. From the experimental results, we con-
cluded that the utilization of mass recovery simultaneously to heat recovery improved the COP and
Keywords:
cooling power up to 11.7% and 15.4%, respectively, when compared to the values obtained when only
Adsorption
Ammonia
heat recovery was employed. Regarding the influence of the heat source temperature, maximum cooling
Chiller power and COP were obtained when that temperature was, respectively, 75 C and 65 C. As for the influ-
Sodium bromide ence of the cycle time, the highest values of COP were obtained with an 88 min cycle, whereas the highest
Solar cooling values of cooling power were obtained at different cycle time, depending on the value of other operation
Waste heat conditions. When the chiller was driven by hot water at 70 C, and the inlet water temperature in the
evaporator was not kept constant, it cooled water from 23 C to 10 C in 90 min with mean cooling power
of 1400 W and COP 0.33.
2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: rogerio.oliveira@ufsc.br (R.G. de Oliveira), danieljoaogeneroso@gmail.com (D.J. Generoso).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2015.10.057
0306-2619/ 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
258 R.G. de Oliveira, D.J. Generoso / Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265
1. Introduction
Sorption refrigerator are among the alternatives for cooling
power production through directly use of thermal energy, instead
of electricity, which is especially attractive if the heat is provided
without extra costs. These refrigerators can be of the absorption
or adsorption type, and they have been the focus of much
research [19], due their capability to produce cooling power
directly from waste heat or solar energy. However, for these
refrigerators effectively use solar radiation or low grade waste
heat, from a broad range of processes, as main source of energy,
the temperature level of the heat source should be as low as
possible.
Saha et al. [10] developed a two-stage silica gel adsorption chil-
ler driven with hot water at 55 C that produced 3.6 kW of cooling
power from cold water at 14 C, with COP of 0.36. The silica-
gelwater adsorption chiller studied by Xia et al. [11] had similar
COP, but was driven by hot water at 75 C and cooled water from
16 C. A higher COP of 0.43 was achieved by the silica-gel adsorp-
tion chiller developed by Chen et al. [12] when the machine was
driven by hot water at 73 C and also cooled water from 16 C.
Vasta et al. [13] used zeolite as adsorbent in their adsorption chiller
and achieved COP of 0.41 to cool water from 12 C when the heat
source was 90 C.
Both silica-gel and zeolite are adsorbents in which the adsorp-
tion process occurs due to intermolecular forces similar to those
responsible for the condensation of vapors, and hence, this type
of process is called physical adsorption [14]. However, there is
another type of adsorption, called chemical adsorption or
chemisorption, in which the adsorption process occurs due to
valence forces similar to those operating in the formation of
chemical compounds [14]. In practical terms, the thermodynamic
equilibrium is the main feature to distinguish between physical
and chemical adsorption, which have respectively, divariant and
monovariant equilibrium.
The use of physical adsorbents in adsorption chillers is more
common than the use of chemical adsorbents like metallic salts.
The latter type of adsorbent usually has the advantage of higher
adsorption capacity but the disadvantage of lower adsorption
rate when compared to physical adsorbents, and relatively less
research about chemisorption chillers is available in the
literature.
The chemisorption machines studied by Lepinasse et al. [15]
and by Bao et al. [16] were refrigerators were the cooling power
was produced through a resorption process in the reactor placed
inside an insulated box. The purpose of these machines was to
keep a low temperature inside the box. The machine developed
by the former authors kept air inside the box between 3 C
and 5 C for about 3 h when the ambient temperature was
20 C, whereas the machine developed by the latter authors kept
air at the bottom zone of the cold box below 0 C for 5 h when
the ambient temperature was 20 C. In both machines, the heat
source to drive the machines was at least 150 C, which was
also the heat source temperature used to drive a chemisorption
chiller that produced cooling power at 0 C with COP of 0.30
[17].
The above-mentioned machines employed resorption process,
which eliminates the use of condenser and evaporator, because
the cooling power was produced inside a reactor due an endother-
mic desorption process of ammonia from one of the following type
of salts: PbCl2, NH4Cl or NaBr.
Experimental results presented in the literature [18] show that
the latter salt is suitable to be used in both resorption refrigerators
and in conventional sorption chillers in which the cooling power
production occurs in the evaporator.
Other examples of the utilization of NaBr as sorbent in
chemisorption refrigerators can be seem in the work presented
by Jiang et al. [19] and by Kiplagat et al. [20]. In the former work,
a refrigerator operating with a resorption process in double stage
could effectively produce cooling power at 20 C, when the heat
source was between 70 C and 90 C. In the latter work, NaBr
impregnated in expanded graphite was used as composite sorbent
in the reactor of a chemisorption chiller, which cooled water 13 C
with COP above 0.4 when hot water with temperature between
60 C and 70 C was used as heat source and tap water at 25 C
was used as heat sink.
Because the prototype studied by the latter authors had only
one reactor, the cooling power halted during the regeneration of
the sorbent, and the machine could not operate as the usual
adsorption chillers, which can produce cooling effect even during
the regeneration period of the sorbent. Moreover, as the machine
had only one reactor, it could not operate using heat and mass
recovery processes. Previous studies with adsorption refrigerators
using physical adsorbents [21,22] or composite of physical and
chemical adsorbents [23,24] had shown that heat recovery and
refrigerant mass recovery between the reactors are effective ways
to enhance the COP and the cooling power. The importance of
these recovery processes was also highlighted in a recent study
[25] related to the use of chemisorption reactors combined with
a turbine to provide electricity and cooling power. The authors of
the latter study showed with their theoretical analysis that
combined heat and mass recovery between the chemisorption
reactors could enhance the COP by 3538%, and increase the elec-
tricity efficiency from 8% to 12%.
Therefore, to overcome the limitations of the study carried by
Kiplagat et al. [20] and to provide experimental evidence of the
heat and mass recovery process influence on machines with chem-
ical adsorption, we design, built and tested a chemisorption chiller
with two reactors that could operate with or without heat and
mass recovery processes. Moreover, in the present study, the
composite sorbent of NaBr impregnated in expanded graphite
was consolidated in blocks, instead of be filled as powder around
fins, as done by the latter authors. Because consolidated sorbent
exhibits higher thermal conductivity than powder sorbent, the
utilization of fins was unnecessary.
The COP and cooling power of the chiller was assessed under
different working conditions, which included the recovery
processes previously mentioned, under variable cycle time and
operation temperatures in the evaporator and in the reactors.
2. Materials and methods
The chemisorption chiller presented in this work had two reac-
tors, one evaporator and one condenser. Each of these heat
exchangers had their temperature, pressure and water mass flow
measured by sensors, which sent periodically, their signal to a data
logger. The scheme of the chiller and the characteristics of the
sensors are presented in sub Section 2.1, whereas the preparation
of the composite sorbent is described in sub Section 2.2.
The experiments were divided in two types, whose description
is shown in sub Section 2.3. In the first type of experiments, we
compared the performance of the chiller at selected operation
conditions. In the second type of experiment, we assessed the
minimum temperature of the cooled water produced by this chiller
when it was employed to cool water stored in a 125 L tank. The
mean cooling power and coefficient of performance (COP) were
calculated along the whole cooling process.
Finally, in Section 2.4, we explain the calculation procedures
used to obtain the cooling power and COP, together with their
respective experimental uncertainties.
 R.G. de Oliveira, D.J. Generoso / Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265 259

Fig. 1. Scheme of the chemisorption chiller.

2.1. Description of the chemisorption chiller and the refrigeration

sorption cycle

The scheme of the chiller is presented in Fig. 1. The chiller

operated in a cycle where while one reactor was being heated
and desorbed refrigerant to the condenser, the other reactor
was being cooled and adsorbed refrigerant from the evaporator.
The refrigerant condensed was kept in an insulated bottle until
it was transferred to the evaporator at predefined periods, defined
according to the operation condition tested, as explained in sub
Section 2.3.
The reactors were tube and shell heat exchangers with the
composite sorbent inside the tubes and water flowing in the shell.
The photo of the reactor without the shell and with the shell is
shown in Fig. 2. Other characteristics of the reactor are shown in
Table 1.
The current chiller design considered the possibility of changing
the adsorbent bed inside the reactor to allow the utilization of a
different adsorbent. For a commercially designed chiller, this pos-
sibility would not be necessary, which would allow the construc-
tion of a reactor with about 22 kg less due the absence of flanges
and pipes lids. These components were employed to allow the
opening of the reactor to access and change the adsorbent. More-
over, the bed thickness, the expanded graphite to salt mass ratio
and the bed density were not optimized, and future experiments
may show that the mass ratio between adsorbent bed and reactor
can increase to allow higher cooling power and COP in the same
machine.
The condenser and the evaporator were also tube and shell
reactors. In the condenser, the refrigerant condensed inside the
tubes and water flowed through the shell, whereas in the evapora- Fig. 2. (a) Top view of the reactor tubes. (b) Side view of reactor tubes. (c) Complete
tor, the refrigerant evaporated in the shell, around the tubes, and reactor with shell.
260 R.G. de Oliveira, D.J. Generoso / Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265
Table 1
Constructive characteristics of each reactor.
Heat exchange area (m2)
Mass of tubes (kg)
Total metallic mass (tubes, shell, cover, etc.) (kg)
Inner diameter of the tubes (m)
Number of tubes
Inner diameter of the shell (m)
Number of baffles
Mass of dry composite adsorbent (kg)
Thickness of the adsorbent layer (m)
Length of the adsorbent inside the tube (m)
water flowed in multiple passes, through the tubes. The evaporator
was only partially filled with tubes to ensure that even with the
reduction of refrigerant inside the evaporator during the adsorp-
tion period, the tubes remained immersed in the refrigerant.
Fig. 3 shows the disposition of the tubes inside the evaporator
and the cover used to ensure multiple passes. Other characteristics
of the evaporator are shown in Table 2.
Each reactor was heated and cooled under predefined periods of
time, as described in Section 2.3. During the heating period of one
reactor, the composite sorbent desorbed refrigerant to the con-
denser, and the heat consumed by the sorbent and by the reactor
was provided by hot water heated in the boiler. At the same time,
the heat released in the condensation process of the refrigerant
was being removed by water coming from a sink, which in this
work, was tap water from the city grid supply. The water leaving
the condenser entered the other reactor to cool it down and to
remove the adsorption heat released during the adsorption
process.
In an alternative approach, the reactors could have their heat
removed directly from the water coming from the heat sink, but
this would imply in two sinks instead of one, which would increase
the number of valves, connections, pipes, etc. of the system.
Once the heating and cooling period of the reactors was
completed, there was a lag period where the refrigerant stored in
the bottle was transferred to the evaporator. During this period,
the reactors could exchange heat between them or also, exchange
refrigerant mass. The influence of these recovery processes in the
performance of the chiller was investigated, as further explained
in Section 2.3.
2.2. Preparation of the composite consolidated sorbent
Each reactor contained a consolidated block of composite sor-
bent made from the impregnation of NaBr in expanded graphite.
NaBr was chosen as the sorbent salt because previous research
[18] indicated that this salt is capable to desorb ammonia at the
temperature of 65 C when the condensation temperature is
30 C. The desorption and adsorption of ammonia by NaBr occurs
according to the following equation:
Fig. 3. (a) Front view of the tubes inside the evaporator shell. (b) Cover to ensure multiple passes through the tubes.
NaBr 5:25NH3 () NaBr  5:25NH3 5:25DHR 1
The preparation of the composite sorbent was presented else-
2.81
where [26], and mainly included the expansion of the expandable
82.5
140 graphite at temperatures between 700 C and 750 C, followed by
0.055 the mixture of the expanded graphite to an appropriate amount
19 of salt solution with mass concentration around 23%, so that the
0.31 slurry formed by the these components had the proportion
1
between salt and expanded graphite equal to 3:2. The slurry was
9.4
8.4  103 then, dried in an electric oven at 130 C for a period between 6
0.81 and 12 h, depending on the amount of slurry to be dried.
Once a batch of slurry was turn into a dried composite powder,
three samples of this powder were put in a moisture analyzer (SHI-
MADZU, MOC 63u) to have its moisture content identified. In all
batches, the final moisture content of the composite powder was
below 1.5%. The composite powder was then, put inside the tubes
of the reactor, and compressed until it reached the bulk density of
500 kg/m3.
2.3. Experimental procedures
Experiments were conducted at different controlled operation
conditions to investigate how these conditions influence the per-
formance of the chiller. The controlled conditions were the inlet
hot water temperature in the reactor (TIn,Hot), the inlet cold water
temperature in the evaporator (TIn,Cold), the cycle time, the use of
heat recovery and the use of mass recovery. During the heat recov-
ery process, water flowed from one reactor to the other one, with-
out pass through the boiler. This process lasted 4 min, and each
cycle had two heat recoveries. The influence of mass recovery in
the performance of the chiller was only assessed in the cycles with
heat recovery, and both processes occurred simultaneously. During
the mass recovery, the reactor that had desorbed refrigerant to the
condenser sent refrigerant mass to the reactor that had adsorbed
refrigerant from the evaporator due to the pressure difference
between them.
In the cycle without heat recovery, there was a lag period of one
minute between the heating and cooling period of a reactor. The
lag period was necessary to allow the refrigerant stored in the bot-
tle to flow to the evaporator. In the cycles with heat recovery, this
lag period was not necessary because the refrigerant flowed from
the bottle to the evaporator during the heat recovery period. Nev-
ertheless, in all cycles, the heating and the cooling period of the
reactors had the same length of time to ensure that while one reac-
tor was receiving heat from the source, the other one was releasing
heat to the sink.
Table 3 summarizes the controlled conditions tested and also
shows the inlet water temperature in the condenser (TIn,Med,Cn)
and in the reactor (TIn,Med,Rc) during the cooling period. Although
these temperatures were not controlled because the water came
directly from the city grid supply, it is possible to see that the for-
mer temperature was approximately constant at 28 C in most
 R.G. de Oliveira, D.J. Generoso / Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265 261

Table 2 where Dt is the interval of time of each data acquisition by the data
V_ Ev is the
Constructive characteristics of the evaporator.
logger, qW is the water density at the inlet temperature,
Heat exchange area (m2) 1.57 volumetric flow of water through the evaporator, CpW is the specific
Total volume of refrigerant (m3) 1.06  102 heat of water, TOut,Cold is the outlet water temperature from the
Volume of refrigerant above the tubes (m3) 4.89  103
evaporator, ti is the length of time since the beginning of a cycle,
Length of the tube (m) 0.93
Number of tubes 43 n is the number of times that data was acquired by the data logger
during a cycle, mCS is the total mass of composite adsorbent inside
the two reactors and V CS is the total volume of composite adsorbent
experiments, and that the latter temperature had higher variation
inside the two reactors. As the mass and volume of the adsorbent
because it depended on the amount of heat released in the con-
were constant in all experiments, each 150 W of cooling correspond
denser under the different operational conditions.
to 8 W/kg and 4 kW/m3.
The results of the experimental conditions shown in Table 3
Eq. (2) gives the accumulated mean value of the cooling power
presented in this work were obtained after the second consecutive
since the beginning of the cycle, and the values presented in this work
cycle in which the controlled operation conditions remained con-
are those obtained at the end of the cycle, unless stated otherwise.
stant. This procedure was adopted to remove the influence in the
The COP was calculated with Eq. (5) and indicates the amount of
machine operation that the previously tested operation condition
heat that need to be provided to the system to obtain a certain
could have in the current operation condition being tested.
amount of cooling load.
Once the experiments at the conditions shown in Table 3 were
concluded, a different type of experiment were conducted where Q Cool
COP 5
the chiller operated under a 68 min cycle with heat and mass Q Hot
recovery and inlet hot water temperature of 70 C. These experi-
n h
X i
ments were used to identify the minimum temperature that water
stored in a 125 L tank at ambient temperature (23 C) could be
Q Hot V_ Source CpW T In;Hot  T Out;Hot
Dt qW 6
i
i1
chilled, and to assess how the COP and cooling power varied in suc-
cessive cycles when the inlet water temperature to the evaporator n h
X i
varied with the time. Q Cool V_ Ev CpW T In;Cold  T Out;Cold
Dt qW 7
i
i1

2.4. Performance indicators

where V_ Source is the volumetric flow of water from the heat source
and TOut,Hot is the outlet water temperature from the reactor during
The most important performance indicators for adsorption chillers
the heating period.
are the cooling power Q_ Cool and the coefficient of performance TIn and TOut were measured with resistance temperature detec-
(COP). The cooling power was obtained with Eq. (2), and it was used tors (RTD) 1/10 DIN class with uncertainty at 0 C of 0.03 C. The
to calculate the specific cooling power (SCP) and the cooling power uncertainty in the temperature acquisition by the data logger
density (CPD), as shown in Eqs. (3) and (4), respectively. Both SCP
was 0.06 C. V_ Ev was measured with a flowmeter FPR301 (Omega
and CPD are important parameter in the design of adsorption chillers
because the former indicates the amount of cooling power that can be Engineering, Inc.) and V_ Source was measured with a flowmeter
produced per mass unit of adsorbent whereas the latter one indicates FPR204 (Omega Engineering, Inc.), and both have uncertainty of
the minimum volume necessary to accommodate the adsorbent. 3.2  103 L/s. The uncertainty in the flow acquisition by the data
logger was 2.8  105 L/s for the sensor FPR301 and 8.8  104 L/s
Pn h i
i1 V_ Ev CpW T In;Cold  T Out;Cold
Dt qW for the sensor FPR204. The data acquisition was done with a data
Q_ Cool i
2 logger 34772a (Agilent Technologies, Inc.), and occurred every 6 s.
ti The uncertainty in the values of cooling power and COP were
obtained, as recommended in the literature [27], with Eq. (8) when
Q_ Cool the uncertainty of the variables were independent of each other or
SCP 3
mCS with Eq. (9), when they were dependent of each other.
s
 2  2  2
Q_ Cool dP dP dP
CPD 4 DP DV 1 DV 2    DV n 8
V CS
dV 1 dV 2 dV n

Table 3
Operation conditions for the chemisorption chilller.

Heat recovery Mass recovery Cycle time (min) TIn,Cold (C) TIn,Med,Cn (C) TIn,Med,Rc (C) TIn,Hot (C)
Yes No 68 12.1 0.1 27.9 0.1 29.1 0.6 70.0 1.3
Yes Yes 68 12.0 0.2 27.4 0.1 29.1 0.7 69.9 1.8
Yes Yes 78 12.0 0.1 28.0 0.1 29.5 0.7 69.9 1.3
Yes Yes 88 12.0 0.1 28.4 0.1 29.9 0.8 70.0 1.4
Yes No 68 12.1 0.2 27.5 0.1 28.9 0.9 75.1 1.4
Yes Yes 68 12.0 0.2 27.5 0.1 29.0 0.9 75.0 1.4
Yes Yes 68 12.0 0.2 28.4 0.1 29.9 1.4 79.9 1.6
Yes Yes 68 15.1 0.1 28.4 0.1 29.7 0.4 65.0 1.4
Yes Yes 78 15.1 0.1 27.9 0.1 29.5 0.5 65.0 1.1
No No 62 15.1 0.2 28.2 0.1 30.0 0.7 69.9 1.1
Yes No 68 15.1 0.1 29.1 0.1 30.7 0.7 70.0 1.4
Yes Yes 68 15.1 0.2 28.9 0.1 30.5 0.6 70.0 1.3
Yes Yes 78 15.0 0.1 27.6 0.1 29.6 0.7 69.9 1.4
Yes Yes 88 15.1 0.1 27.8 0.1 29.6 0.7 70.0 1.1
Yes No 68 15.2 0.3 28.2 0.1 30.0 0.9 75.1 1.7
Yes Yes 68 15.1 0.2 28.3 0.1 30.0 0.8 75.1 1.8
262 R.G. de Oliveira, D.J. Generoso / Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265
dP dP dP
DP DV 1 DV 2    DV n
dV 1 dV 2 dV n
where DP is the uncertainty in the value of a certain parameter P
calculated through an equation, DV is the uncertainty in the mea-
sured value of a certain variable used to calculate a certain param-
eter P and the subscript n is the number of variables used to
calculate a certain parameter P.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Influence of heat and mass recovery in COP and cooling power
The variation of the COP and cooling power of the chiller when
heat recovery or heat and mass recovery were used is shown in
Fig. 4, for the operation conditions of TIn,Hot equal to 70 C and
TIn,Cold equal to 15 C. The reference values were those obtained
when neither heat recovery nor mass recovery were employed.
It is possible to see that the use of heat recovery increases the
COP, when compared to that obtained when the machine operated
without heat recovery, but this process decreases the cooling
power. The cooling load absorbed in the evaporator during the
cycle without heat and mass recovery and during the cycle with
heat recovery were practically the same within the experimental
uncertainty and equal to respectively, 4.1 0.2 MJ and
4.0 0.2 MJ, whereas in the cycle with heat and mass recovery,
the heat absorbed by the evaporator was equal to 4.3 0.2 MJ.
Hence, the main reason to the reduction of the cooling power
was the increase of cycle time in almost 10%, as it passed from
62 min in the cycle without heat recovery to 68 min in the cycle
with heat recovery or with heat and mass recovery. The COP
increased with the heat recovery because 29% of the heat used
by the reactor could be recovered at this operation condition.
The utilization of mass recovery simultaneously to the heat recov-
ery caused further increment in the COP and helped to decrease the
influence of the longer cycle time in the reduction of the cooling
power.
The mass recovery increased the COP due to an increase of the
amount of heat absorbed in the evaporator and due to the
reduction of the total amount of heat that had to be supplied by
an external source to the reactors. The former phenomenon
occurred because the mass recovery reduced the amount of
ammonia remained in the adsorbent bed after the heating period,
and hence, the adsorbent bed could adsorb more refrigerant
from the evaporator, when the cooling period started. The latter
phenomenon occurred because during the mass recovery, the
temperature of the adsorbent that adsorbed ammonia increased
due to the reaction heat released in the adsorption process.
Fig. 4. Performance variation with the utilization of heat and mass recovery.
TIn,Hot = 70 C and TIn,Cold = 15 C.
9
Fig. 5. Performance variation with the utilization of mass recovery at different
working conditions.
Fig. 5 presents the performance variation of the chiller at differ-
ent operation conditions when both heat and mass recovery were
used instead of only heat recovery. In this case, the reference
values were those obtained with the cycles that employed only
heat recovery.
At all conditions of TIn,Hot and TIn,Cold, the utilization of mass
recovery in the cycle with heat recovery enhanced the cooling
power and the COP. The enhancement in the cooling power
decreased with the increase of TIn,Hot and TIn,Cold, as the operation
conditions during the heating and cooling periods became more
favorable to complete the reaction shown in Eq. (1). This behavior
can be explained due to the fact that as the value of TIn,Hot and
TIn,Cold increase, the amount of ammonia desorbed and adsorbed
also increases, and hence, there is less ammonia available to be
transferred from the hot adsorbent bed to the cold adsorbent bed
during the mass transfer process. As for the COP, the greatest
contribution of the mass recovery was the reduction of the amount
of heat that need to be supplied by the external source, as previous
explained, and this reduction was more significant at the
conditions that demanded more sensible heat, as those when
TIn,Hot was in its highest value.
3.2. Influence of the heat source and evaporator temperature in COP
and cooling power
The influence of TIn,Hot and TIn,Cold in the cooling power and COP
of the 68 min cycles with heat and mass recovery can be seen in
Fig. 6. For the values of cooling power shown in Fig. 6a, the specific
cooling power (SCP) ranged from 44.8 W/kg to 64.1 W/kg, whereas
the cooling power density (CPD) varied between 22.4 kW/m3 and
32.1 kW/m3.
As expected, the elevation of TIn,Cold increases both the cooling
power and the COP, because the evaporation occurs at higher
temperatures, which benefits the adsorption process. The mean
evaporation temperature of the cycle with TIn,Hot of 75 C and TIn,Cold
of 15 C was 13.3 1.0 C, whereas it was 10.3 0.8 C in the cycle
with TIn,Cold of 12 C and same TIn,Hot. For the length of time chosen in
these experiments, the increase of TIn,Hot reduces the COP because
the increment of the cooling load due to the larger amount of
refrigerant desorbed with the increase of TIn,Hot was smaller than
the increment of the heat consumed due to the higher temperature
achieved by the adsorbent beds and reactors. For example, when
TIn,Cold was 15 C, the cooling load absorbed by the evaporator
increased 19% when TIn,Hot was raised from 65 C to 75 C, but
the heat absorbed by the reactors increased 35%. Nevertheless,
the cooling power also increased because there was an increment
of the cooling load in the cycles within this range of TIn,Hot.
 R.G. de Oliveira, D.J. Generoso / Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265
Fig. 6. (a) Cooling power at different TIn,Hot and TIn,Cold. (b) COP at different TIn,Hot and TIn,Cold. Cycle time of 68 min with heat and mass recovery.
When TIn,Cold was 12 C and TIn,Hot varied between 70 C and
80 C, the COP also decrease with the increase of TIn,Hot, but the
cooling power first increased when TIn,Hot varied from 70 C to
75 C, to then, decreased as TIn,Hot was raised to 80 C. The cooling
load absorbed by the evaporator at TIn,Hot of 70 C and 75 C were
similar and respectively, 3.78 0.19 MJ and 3.84 0.19 MJ, but at
TIn,Hot of 80 C, it dropped to 3.21 0.19 MJ. A possible explanation
to this fact is that the amount of ammonia adsorbed during the
cooling period at TIn,Cold of 12 C was relatively smaller when
compared to that when TIn,Cold was 15 C. In the former situation,
a TIn,Hot of 70 C was enough to desorb most of ammonia within a
period of 30 min and hence, the values of cooling load at 70 C
and 75 C were similar, and further increment of TIn,Hot would not
increase significantly the amount of ammonia desorbed and
adsorbed. Moreover, the adsorbed amount during the cooling period
of the reactors was not a function of only TIn,Cold but also a function
of TIn,Med,Rc, which was higher and had larger standard deviation in
the experiment where TIn,Hot was 80 C. A higher value of TIn,Med,Rc
with larger standard deviation implies in lower adsorbed amount
during the cooling period of the reactor and for such a reason,
the evaporator absorbed less heat when TIn,Hot was 80 C.
3.3. Influence of cycle time in the COP and cooling power
Fig. 7 shows the cooling power and COP obtained at cycles with
heat and mass recovery, but which had different length of time.
For the values of cooling power shown in Fig. 7a, the SCP ranged
from 41.9 W/kg to 57.2 W/kg, whereas the CPD varied between
21.0 kW/m3 and 28.6 kW/m3.
In the cycle with TIn,Hot of 70 C and TIn,Cold of 12 C, the increase
of the cycle time reduced the cooling power in up to 9% and
increased the COP in 18%. As previously mentioned, under the
above mentioned temperature conditions, a heating period of
30 min was enough to desorb most of the ammonia from the
adsorbent bed, and the decrease in cooling power indicates that
the percent increase of the cycle length was higher than the
percent increase of the cooling load absorbed in the evaporator.
Fig. 7. (a) Cooling power at different cycle time. (b) COP at different the cycle time. Three selected operation conditions with heat and mass recovery.
263
Nevertheless, as most of the heat absorbed by the reactors was
sensible heat, the increase of the cycle length enhanced the COP
because as the heating period occurred, the inlet and outlet heat
source fluid temperature approached to each other, and the per-
cent increase of the heat consumed by the reactors was smaller
than the percent increase of the heat absorbed by the evaporator.
As expected, the highest COP and cooling power were obtained
when TIn,Cold was 15 C instead of 12 C. When the chiller was dri-
ven with TIn,Hot at 70 C in a 78 min cycle, it achieved its maximum
cooling power (1200 60 W) among he conditions presented in
Table 3. The highest value of COP (0.36 0.03) was also obtained
with the latter TIn,Hot, but cycle time of 88 min, or with TIn,Hot at
65 C and cycle time of 78 min.
3.4. Performance comparison
A large number of the adsorption chillers presented in the liter-
ature were tested to operate with heat sources of 80 C or above, as
in these temperatures, those chillers may show their best perfor-
mance. Moreover, in those studies, the sink temperature usually
varied between 25 C and 35 C, the inlet temperature in the evap-
orator may had varied between 10 C and 20 C, and in some cases,
the evaporation temperature was informed instead of the chilled
water temperature. Hence, a direct comparison between different
machines is hardly possible, and Table 4 is presented with the
purpose to shown how the performance of the chiller discussed
in this work stands among the performance of other chillers
described in the literature.
From the data presented in Table 4, one can conclude that the
chiller presented in this work has COP and SCP compatible to those
obtained by other machines that operate with heat source temper-
atures up to 75 C. From this table, it is also possible to realize that
even machines with the same type of adsorbent can have a consid-
erable different performance. As the chiller presented in this work
was effectively driven by hot water at 65 C with COP similar to
that obtained by machines driven by hot water at higher tempera-
ture, the utilization of composite sorbent of NaBr impregnated in
264 R.G. de Oliveira, D.J. Generoso / Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265

Table 4
Performance comparison with the chiller presented in this work and in previous ones.

Pair TIn,Med,Rc (C) TIn,Hot (C) TIn,Med,Cn (C) TIn,Cold (C) COP SCP Ref.
NaBr/EG-NH3 30 70 28 12 0.32 46.6 This work
NaBr/EG-NH3 30 70 28 15 0.34 64.1 This work
NaBr/EG-NH3 30 65 28 15 0.36 57.6 This work
Silica-gelH2O 28 70 28 10 0.27 52 [28]
Silica-gelH2O 31 73 31 16 0.43 69 [12]
Silica-gelH2O 31 75 31 16 0.36 62.7 [11]
Silica-gelH2O 28 80 28 7 0.33 92 [28]
Silica-gelH2O 28 85 28 12 0.20 38.3 [29]
Silica-gelH2O 28 87 28 12 0.55 150 [30]
Silica-gel/Ca(NO3)2H2O 30 80 30 15 0.23 245 [31]
Silica-gel/LiClH2O 30 87 30 12 0.23 160 [32]
Zeolite AQSOATM FAM Z02-H2O 28 90 28 12 0.41 600 [13]

expanded graphite in different chillers design may lead to the

developed of chillers more suitable to be driven by hot water
heated in flat plate solar collectors or in other sources of hot water
with temperatures limited to less than 80 C.
It is worth mention that when compared to the chillers that
have water as refrigerant and operate under vacuum, the chillers
that operate with pressure above atmospheric, as the one pre-
sented in this work, have the advantage that their performance is
not affected by minor refrigerant leakages. In the machines that
have water as refrigerant, periodically purge must be conducted
to remove the infiltrated air, which reduces the performance of
the machine.
Fig. 9. Cooling power and COP through successive cycles, with variable inlet
3.5. Variation of COP and cooling power at variable evaporator temperature in the evaporator.

temperature

Once the cooling power and COP were assessed at different
cycle time, TIn,Hot and TIn,Cold, these performance indicators were
then, assessed under a condition of constant cycle time and
TIn,Hot, but variable TIn,Cold. This type of condition occurs when the
chiller is used to cool a certain amount of water from a specified
temperature to a lower value, instead of remove a certain heat load
from an air-conditioned space.
Fig. 8 shows the variation of the inlet and outlet temperature
through the evaporator in successive cycles. The inlet water to
the evaporator (TIn,Cold) came from the top of a 125 L insulated tank,
while the outlet water from the evaporator returned to the bottom
of this tank. The cooling power and COP in the successive cycles
can be seen in Fig. 9.
From the beginning to the end of the first cycle, the inlet water
temperature dropped from 23.5 C to 12.3 C, and the outlet
temperature was 1.5 C lower, as in the experiment conducted at
similar conditions, but constant TIn,Cold of 12.0 C, as shown in
Table 3. The cooling power and COP in the latter experiment were,
respectively, 930 50 W and 0.28 0.03, but in the experiment
with variable TIn,Cold, these performance indicators were, respec-
tively, 1690 60 W and 0.41 0.03. In both experiments, the outlet
temperature from the evaporator was close to 10.5 C at the end of
the cycle, but in the experiment that the inlet temperature to the
evaporator was kept constant at 12.0 C, the cooling power of the
chiller was 45% smaller and the COP was 32% smaller, when com-
pared to those figures obtained when the inlet temperature varied.
As the TIn,Cold decreased in the successive cycles, the mean cool-
ing power and mean COP also decreased, until they reached the
values of respectively, 710 40 W and 0.19 0.02, when the outlet
temperature from the evaporator reached 3.8 C at the end of the
fifth cycle.
4. Conclusions
We assessed the COP and cooling power of a chemisorption
chiller at different operation conditions and from the analysis of
the results we obtained the following findings:

The heat recovery process increases the COP in about 32%, but it
decreases the cooling power in about 11%, because there is no
cooling production during the period in which the heat recovery
occurs. When mass recovery occurred simultaneously to heat
recovery, the increment of COP reached 44%, and the decrease
in the cooling power was only 5%.

Mass recovery simultaneously to heat recovery process
improved the COP in 8.711.7% and the cooling power in 5.8
15.4%, when compared to the values obtained in the cycles with
only heat recovery. These results indicate that mass recovery is
appropriate to enhance the performance not only in physical
adsorption processes, as well described in the literature, but
Fig. 8. Inlet and outlet temperatures in the evaporator through successive cycles. also in chemical adsorption processes.
 R.G. de Oliveira, D.J. Generoso / Applied Energy 162 (2016) 257265

When the cycle time was 68 min, maximum cooling power and
COP were obtained when the reactors were fed with hot water
at, respectively, 75 C and 65 C.

Longer cycle time enhanced the COP in all operation conditions
tested, but decreased the cooling power in some operation
conditions.

The chiller with composite NaBr-ammonia working pair when
driven by hot water at 65 C could achieve COP similar to that
obtained by chillers with other working pairs, but driven with
hot water at higher temperatures.

When the inlet cold water to the evaporator varied with the
time, the chiller driven by hot water at 70 C could chill water
from 23 C to 10 C in about 1 h and half with mean cooling
power of 1400 W and COP of 0.33 or from the same initial tem-
perature to 4 C in almost 6 h, with a mean COP of 0.19 and
mean cooling power of 710 W.
Acknowledgements
Prof. Dr. Oliveira thanks CNPq for the productivity in research
grant 306364/2010-7 and for the Universal 14/2012 Grant
478654/2012-0, FAPESC for the Universal 04/2012 Grant
3819/2012, the company Nacional de Grafite LTDA for the expansi-
ble graphite used in the composite sorbent, and the IFSC for the
machinery used to manufacture the chiller.
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