Performance improvement of adsorption cooling by heat and mass recovery operation

An adsorption cooling system was developed and tested and various operation procedures have been tried. The experimental results show that the heat recovery operation between two adsorption beds will increase the COP by about 25% if compared with one adsorber basic cycle system. It was also proved that mass recovery is very effective for heat recovery adsorption cooling operation, which may help to obtain a COP increase of more than 10%. Theoretical analyses on the COP have been completed for various heat and mass recovery cycles, such as basic intermittent adsorption cycle, continuous two-adsorber heat recovery cycle, mass recovery cycle, mass recovery with sensible heat recovery, and mass recovery with both sensible heat and heat of adsorption recovery. The theoretical results are in good agreement with experimental values. Based upon the developed theoretical model, it is possible to predict the COP for various operation procedures of a real adsorption cooling system.