Increasing the Performance of an Adsorption Chiller Operating in the Water Desalination Mode

Abstract

The intensive development of the world economy and the expected population growth mean that demand for cooling and water will continue to rise. The use of conventional technologies to meet this demand is associated with an enormous expenditure of electricity, which still comes mainly from non-renewable sources. With the increasing demand for energy, the increasing scarcity of drinking water, and the negative impact of humankind on the environment due to global warming and ozone depletion, intensive research has been carried out to find modern desalination technologies Most of the technologies use electricity for the process of desalination, and over 6% of the world’s electricity is generated from non-renewable sources, thus increasing the emissions of harmful pollutants into the atmosphere. One possibility to reduce emissions is the use of adsorption chillers with desalination function, which allow the production of cooling simultaneously with the process of water desalination. These systems can be powered by low-temperature waste heat from industrial processes or from renewable sources (solar panels) and require little electricity to operate. This paper presents options to improve their performance and increase the production of condensate in the process of desalination of saline water. Moreover, also presented are the results of tests carried out on a two-bed adsorption chiller with desalination function. The aim of the study was to determine the effect of cycle time on the cooling coefficient of performance (COP) and on the production of condensate from water desalination. The obtained results confirmed that increasing the adsorption and desorption cycle time leads to an increase in the COP value of the adsorption chiller, but the efficiency of the desalination process and condensate production decreases with increasing cycle time.

Keywords

• adsorption
• chiller
• desalination