Experimental study of an adsorption chiller for extra low temperature waste heat utilization

Lots of low temperature waste heat exists in industrial fields which also requires cooling processes, i.e.: data center and glass and liquid crystal display panel manufacturing. Silica gel-water adsorption refrigeration can well match the operation temperature in waste heat utilization for these applications but its technical feasibility and experimental performance is not studied. In this paper, a silica gel-water adsorption chiller using mass recovery process is built and experimentally studied under the condition of lower than 80 degrees C driving hot water temperature. For the case of data center waste heat utilization, the adsorption chiller can be well operated under the condition of driving temperatures of 51.4-61.3 degrees C, with the COPs (coefficient of performance) of 0.285-0.477 and SCPs (specific cooling power) of 71.2-108.4 W.kg(-1) while producing 18.8-22.4 degrees C chilled water. For the cases of glass and liquid crystal display panel manufacturing waste heat utilization, COPs of 0.317-0.483 and SCPs of 95.2-146.7 W.kg(-1) are obtained under the conditions of driving temperatures of 56.2-74.9 degrees C and chilled water outlet temperatures of 14.2-16.8 degrees C. These experimental results indicate that feasibility in operation and good performance of silica gel-water adsorption chiller for extra low temperature waste heat utilization is confirmed.