Performance of a high temperature hydrate solid/gas sorption heat pump used as topping cycle for cascaded sorption chillers

The purpose of this paper is to study and analyse the experimental performances of a solid/gas sorption heat pump using a new working pair such as MnCl2 hydrate reacting reversibly with water. The aim of this heat pump device is to produce heat at a temperature level suitable for industrial purposes (typically 160 °C), from waste heat at 90 °C or from environment at 35 °C. Moreover, this kind of process can be efficiently used as a high-temperature topping cycle to drive by means of efficient heat pipes a lower temperature double effect absorption cycle in order to increase the cooling performances by achieving a quadri-effect cascaded chiller. This paper presents the experimental results of the water/hydrate reaction topping cycle and demonstrates the feasibility of a cascading cooling device with high cooling performance: a COP of 1.35 should effectively be attainable.