Abstract
The cycle performance of adsorption cooling system depends on the thermophysical properties of the adsorbent/refrigerant pair and configuration of the adsorber/desorber heat exchanger. In this study, a twodimensional analysis is carried out in order to clarify the performance of the finned tube type adsorber/desorber heat exchanger using a highly porous activated carbon powder (ACP)/ethanol pair. The simulation results show that the average cooling capacity per unit volume of adsorber/desorber heat exchanger and coefficient of performance (COP) can be improved by optimizing fin thickness, fin height, fin pitch and tube diameter. The performance of a single stage adsorption cooling system using ACP/ethanol pair is also compared with that of activated carbon fiber (ACF)/ethanol pair. It is found that the cooling capacities of each adsorbent/refrigerant pair increase with the decrease of adsorption/desorption time and the cooling capacity of ACP/ethanol pair is approximately 2.5 times as much as that of ACF/ethanol pair. It is also shown that COP of ACP/ethanol pair is superior to that of ACF/ethanol pair.
