Multi-bed regenerative adsorption chiller - improving the utilization of waste heat and reducing the chilled water outlet temperature fluctuation

A multi-bed regenerative adsorption chiller design is proposed. The concept aims to extract the most enthalpy from the low-grade waste heat before it is purged into the drain. It is also able to minimise the chilled water tem perature fluctuation so that downstream temperature smoothing device may be downsized or even eliminated in applications where tighter temperature con trol may be required. The design also avoids a master-and-slave configurati on so that materials invested are not under-utilised. Because of the nature of low-grade waste heat utilization, the performance of adsorption chiller s is measured in terms of the recovery efficiency, eta instead of the conve ntional COP. For the same waste heat source flowrate and inlet temperature, a four-bed chiller generates 70% more cooling capacity than a typical two- bed chiller. A six-bed chiller in turn generates 40% more than that of a fo ur-bed chiller. Since the beds can be triggered into operation sequentially during start-up, the risk of ice formation in the evaporator during start- up is greatly reduced compared with that of a two-bed chiller. (C) 2001 Els evier Science Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved.