Modeling of a membrane-based absorption heat pump

In this paper, a membrane heat pump is proposed and analyzed. Fundamentally, the proposed heat pump consists of an aqueous CaCl2 solution flow separated from a water flow by a vapor-permeable membrane. The low activity of the solution results in a net flux of water vapor across the membrane, which heats the solution stream and cools the water stream. This mechanism upgrades water-side low-temperature heat to solution-side high-temperature heat, creating a “temperature lift.” The modeling results show that using two membranes and an air gap instead of a single membrane increases the temperature lift by 185%. The model predicts temperature lifts for the air-gap design of 24, 16, and 6 °C for inlet temperatures of 55, 35, and 15 °C, respectively. Membranes with lower thermal conductivities and higher porosities improve the performance of single-membrane designs while thinner membranes improve the performance of air-gap designs. This device can be used with a solar heating system which already uses concentrated salt solutions for liquid-desiccant cooling.