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Experimental testing of a novel activated carbon/ethanol refrigerator

Conference Paper · June 2016

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Valeria Palomba Andrea Frazzica

Italian National Research Council CNR ITAE
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 EXPERIMENTAL TESTING OF A NOVEL ACTIVATED CARBON/ETHANOL
REFRIGERATOR

Valeria Palombaa,b, Andrea Frazzicaa, Belal Dawoudc, Vincenza Brancatoa, Salvatore Vastaa,
Alessio Sapienzaa, Giovanni Restucciaa

a CNR-ITAE Institute for Advanced Technologies “Nicola Giordano”, Messina

Salita S.Lucia sopra Contesse 5, 98126 Messina, mail: valeria.palomba@itae.cnr.it

b Department of Engineering, University of Messina, C.da Di Dio (S. Agata) – 98166 Messina

c OTH-Regensburg University of Applied sciences, Faculty of mechanical Engineering, HVAC Laboratory, Galgenberg Street 30,
93053-Regensburg, Germany

Abstract

In the present work, the experimental characterization of a 0.5 kW prototype of a refrigerator employing
activated carbon/ethanol as working pair is presented. The developed prototype employs an optimized
adsorber, designed according to the results of kinetic tests performed by a G-LTJ system installed atCNR-
ITAE. Full performance mapping has been realized by means of a specific testing bench available at
CENTROPROVE of CNR-ITAE. Boundary working conditions were evaluated, in terms of desorption,
condensation and evaporation temperatures for refrigeration applications (e.g. food storage). Furthermore,
advanced cycles have been evaluated to assess the enhancement in COP measured achievable. High specific
cooling power, up to 100 W/kg were achieved and, at the lowest evaporation temperatures investigated (< -
5°C), SCP of 50 W/kg were obtained. Heat recovery implementation allowed for an increased COP up to
30% more than reference cycle.

Introduction

During the last decades, adsorption systems have attracted more and more interest, for the possibility of
exploiting waste heat or solar energy, thus reducing CO2 emissions and avoiding the problems related to
vapour compression systems [Henning, 2007]. While focus has been mainly in HVAC systems for air
conditioning, or ice makers for marine applications, also refrigeration should be addressed, as it is an
impacting technology, especially in transportation and food storage facilities [Schwarz et al., 2007]. Not
many adsorption refrigeration systems have been developed so far, and most of them have been intended for
intermittent night-day cycles with regeneration thanks to solar radiation [Sah et al., 2015]. For production of
continuous cooling effect, only a few examples are reported in literature [Lu et al, 2013] [Hassan et al, 2012],
all employing methanol as refrigerant. However, compared to methanol, ethanol represents a promising
alternative, since it is less corrosive and non-toxic.
In such a background, in this paper, experimental results obtained for the systems under refrigeration
boundary conditions are presented. Furthermore, the potential of the machine operating as air conditioner has
been experimentally evaluated and indications of future improvements are given.

The prototype

The main features of the realised prototype are summarised in Table 1, while in Figure 1 a picture of the
system is shown.. It is based on the double-adsorber architecture with a single evaporator and single
condenser, in order to guarantee a quasi-constant cooling effect delivery, and has an overall volume of about
142 dm3.
Type of adsorbent Loose grains of activated carbon SRD 1352/3 (grain size
0.425 – 0.71 mm)
Total adsorbent mass 4.8 kg
Adsorbers 4 aluminium finned flat tubes heat exchangers connected in
parallel for each adsorber
Condenser/Evaporator 1 x finned tube Cu/SS heat exchanger
Total weight of the prototype 120 kg
Total volume of the prototype 142 dm3
Nominal cooling power 500 W
Nominal COP 0.10

Table 1: Main features of the refrigerator prototype developed at ITAE.

Figure 1: The prototype realised and tested

Testing facilities

Performance mapping of the prototype has been carried out by means of a testing facility already available at
CENTROPROVE of CNR ITAE. The testing bench, represented in Figure 2, consists of a heating source and
a cooling source hydraulically connected to the chiller under testing. Heat for desorption is provided by a
16kW electric heater (1), which is connected to a 100 litres tank (2) in order to obtain temperature inlet as
stable as possible.
A 63kW electric chiller is connected to a 200 litres tank (3), which works as a heat sink for providing energy
at the temperature levels for evaporation and condensation. In particular, the desired level of temperature is
obtained, both for condenser and evaporator, by means of a thermoregulator and a mixing valve which mixes
the flow in inlet and outlet pipes of the circuit. Moreover, outlet water from condenser is recirculated into a
plate heat exchanger (5) and employed to cool down the adsorbers. All the valves and the circulators
necessary for the hydraulic management of the prototype are also implemented in the test bench (4).
Management of the bench is realised using a NI acquisition system connected to a PC (6) and a dedicated
software developed in LabVIEW.
Tests under refrigeration conditions have been performed employing, as heat transfer fluid, a 30% volume
water/glycol solution, by connecting the evaporator to a 50 litres tank (9) whose temperature is regulated by a
1 kW thermo-cryostat (8).
 Figure 2: Testing rig at CNR-ITAE CENTROPROVE

Results and discussion

First phase of experimental activity was aimed at determining the optimal cycle time under different
operating conditions. To this purpose, for air conditioning (AC) operation, condensation temperature was
fixed to 30°C, while desorption temperatures of 90°C and 80°C and evaporation temperatures of 15°C and
7°C were considered. Instead, for refrigeration operation (RE), desorption temperature was fixed to 90°C and
two different condensation temperatures (22°C and 27°C) and evaporation temperatures (-5°C, -2°C, +2°C)
were tested. Results are summarised in Figure 3
It can be noted that, under air conditioning operation, the maximum SCP for an evaporation temperature of
7°C is obtained for an overall cycle time of 900s, while, at 15°C evaporation, SCP of 180W/kg was reached
at 600s. Under refrigeration conditions, due to the lower pressures in the evaporator, cycle time needed to
complete ad/desorption is significantly higher than the previous case. In particular, for the cycles with
condensation temperature of 27°C, the maximum SCP reached was 30 W/kg for an overall time of 1500s,
while, when condensation temperature was lowered to 22°C, the best performance could be achieved for a
cycle time of 1200s and corresponds to 72 W/kg. It is worth noticing that SCP presents an initial increase
with cycle times and then, once an optimum point is reached, it decreases rapidly. This trend is due to the fact
that the lowest cycle time chosen probably are not sufficient to realize complete adsorption/desorption of
ethanol because of the severe thermodynamic conditions, especially for RE, and therefore only with longest
cycle times a proper operation is achieved.
Eventually, effect of boundary conditions (desorption, evaporation and condensation temperatures) has been
evaluated and results are reported in Figure 4 and Figure 5 for AC and RE conditions respectively. In Figure
4, SCP as a function of temperature difference between condenser inlet (MTin) and evaporator outlet (LTout)
is reported, while in Figure 5 SCP is reported as a function of evaporator inlet temperature, with curves
parameterized for the condensation level chosen.
Performance achieved for AC operation are good both for cycles simulating mild summer conditions
(ΔT=15°C) and those intended to replicate severe Mediterranean conditions (ΔT>20°C). The highest COP is
160 W/kg, measured for for Tdes=90°C, Tcond=30°C and Tev=15°C, while for Tdes=90°C, Tcond=35°C
and Tev=7°C, SCP of 76 W/kg was obtained. As expected, performance decrease with the increasing
temperature difference between condenser and evaporator, which represent the thermodynamic boundaries
for the cycle. Moreover, the results are strongly influenced also by driving temperature for higher desorption
temperatures (90°) the achievable SCP are double with respect of those achieved at 75°C.
 Figure 3: Cycle time optimization, AC (dotted lines) and RE (straight lines) conditions.

Figure 4: Effect of boundary conditions, AC cycles.

For refrigeration, evaporation temperatures ranging from -7°C to 2°C (suitable, for example, for frozen or
fresh food storage) were evaluated, together with four different condensation temperatures, from 16°C to
27°C. As expected, both temperatures of condenser and evaporator have a clear effect on measured
performance. Results show an almost linear trend in SCP with growing evaporation temperatures and a
similar trend with respect to condensation temperatures. In particular, with the lowest condensation
temperature (16°C), SCP from 60 W/kg to 92 W/kg could be achieved, while for the highest condensation
temperature of 27°C, SCP of 50 W/kg were measured only for evaporation temperatures of 2°C. Results
measured, in terms of specific cooling power, for practical applications, have been comparatively high to
what reported in literature [Wang et al., 2003], [Tamainot-Telto and Critoph, 1997]. , with SCP up to 70
W/kg for evaporation temperatures of -5°C and 30 W/kg for evaporation temperatures of -7°C. For -2°C
evaporation and condensation lower than 25°C, SCPs higher than 50W/kg could be observed.
 Figure 5: effect of boundary conditions, RE cycles.

Management strategy definition

To help improve the performance of the system, especially in terms of COP, different cycles beside the
standard ones have been investigated. A lot of effort has been put into this topic during the last decades, as
reported in several novel and advanced cycles for sorption systems have been studied [Li et al., 2014].
Among the possible alternatives, heat recovery and reallocation of adsorption and desorption times have been
investigated.
Heat recovery has been proved to be particularly effective for RE cycles, as shown in Figure 6: for all the
different boundary conditions tested, COP when heat recovery was applied increased up to 30%, with
maximum value of 0.14 measured for a 90/22/02 cycle.
Reallocation of adsorption and desorption times, whose basic principal is described by [Sapienza et al,2011] ,
was also employed. Results obtained were particularly interesting for AC cycles, while time needed to
complete ad/desorption process when working in RE conditions is too long for practical application of this
management strategy. Results for AC operations are summarised in Table 2, where COP increment of 20% to
more than 30% could be identified.

Cycle R COP Cycle R COP

1 0.13 1 0.07
90/30/15_900 s 1.5 0.20 80/30/07_900 s 1.5 0.10
2 0.17 2 0.08
Table 2: Example of reallocation effect on COP

Conclusions

In this paper, the experimental testing campaign on a novel adsorption refrigerator has been presented.
Parameters investigated include cycle time and operating temperatures. Results obtained proved to be very
promising, since specific cooling power up to 100 W/kg was measured, with values higher than 50 W/kg for
temperature levels compatible with practical applications. Furthermore, management strategy was evaluated
and a great benefit in terms of COP was obtained when realising heat recovery for refrigeration and
reallocation of adsorption and desorption times for air conditioning.
 Figure 6: Effect of heat reocvery on COP for RE cycles.

Acknowledgement
The present work was partially funded by PON “Ricerca e Competitività 2007-13” n°02_00153_2939517 in
the frame of the project “Tecnologie ad alta Efficienza per la Sostenibilità Energetica ed ambientale On
board”, TESEO.

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