Feasibility Analysis on Compression-Assisted Adsorption Chiller Using Chlorides for Underground Cold Transportation

Abstract

Thermal-driven refrigeration technologies, e.g., absorption- or adsorption-type, are gathering momentum since they can utilize low-grade heat from industrial, solar or geothermal energy. However, heat sources and end users are usually mismatched, which could lead to potential heat pollution and increased carbon emissions. Long-distance thermal energy transportation is good for district heating and cooling, which is of great significance if it can achieve a high energy-transportation density and low heat loss. In this paper, a compression-assisted chemisorption chiller driven by a low-temperature heat source for cold transportation is initially proposed, which aims to transport liquid ammonia with chemical potential and generate a cooling effect for end users. A feasibility analysis of the compression-assisted chemisorption chiller is preliminarily performed for 2 km cold transportation. The results show that the highest theoretical coefficient of performance and the energy efficiency of the compression-assisted adsorption chiller using a sodium bromide–ammonia working pair can reach 0.46 and 0.25, respectively, when the evaporation temperature is 20 °C. Among the three selected low-temperature salts, ammonium chloride–ammonia shows the best performance, which is up to about 40% higher than those of sodium bromide–ammonia and barium chloride–ammonia. It is demonstrated that compared with common absorption chillers, a compression-assisted adsorption system has a reasonable working efficiency to transport cold energy when the low- or ultralow-temperature heat source, e.g., lower than 60 °C, is required to be utilized.