Experimental boiling heat transfer coefficients in the high temperature generator of a double effect absorption machine for the lithium bromide/water mixture

The aim of this work is to determine the boiling heat transfer coefficients in the high temperature desorber (HTD) of an air-cooled double effect lithium bromide/water absorption prototype. The HTD is a plate heat exchanger (PHE) with thermal oil on one side, and a lithium bromide solution on the other side. Several experiments were performed with this PHE while the prototype was working with an outdoor dry bulb temperature around 42 °C and condensation temperature around 55 °C. The registered data allowed to calculate the global heat transfer coefficient and the heat transfer coefficient for the LiBr/water mixture in forced convective boiling. The pressure drop produced by the boiling of the refrigerant has been calculated as well. It has been verified that the largest part of the heat supplied in the generator is required for desorbing the refrigerant (except for the maximum solution mass flow), while the sensible heat varies from 10% to 50% of the total heat supplied.