Feasibility study in application of forging waste heat on absorption cooling system

Since there was no real practice of waste heat in forging production process before, the objective of this project is to take advantage of the waste heat energy. In this work, an experimental absorption cooling system was constructed and the waste heat energy in the forging production process was used to generate cooling capacity. A heat exchange conveyor was designed to transfer heat from high temperature forging products to the pipe walls. The cooling capacity from 11 to 20 tons can be achieved by the product weight and the time interval. Four different weights of forging products and five different time intervals were used to conduct the experiments. It proved that the waste heat of forging products could be used to drive the absorption cooling system. A map of the coefficient of performance (COP) was obtained from the experimental results. The coefficients of performance vary from 0.35 to 1.82 under different experimental conditions. Increase in product weight and decrease in time intervals can lead to increase in cooling capacities, but with lower COP. The optimum conditions for both cooling capacity and COP can be found from the optimum diagram, which suggested the best balanced condition for operating the forging absorption cooling system. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4754442]