Influence of mass recovery on the performance of a heat pipe type ammonia sorption refrigeration system using CaCl₂/activated carbon as compound adsorbent

The performance analyses of a sorption refrigeration system with different mass recovery processes are presented, in which compound adsorbent of CaCl₂ and activated carbon is used to improve the mass and heat transfer performances of sorption bed. The heating, cooling and heat recovery processes between two sorption beds were performed by multifunction heat pipes without additional power consumption. The experimental Clapeyron diagrams showed that the cycles with mass recovery (MR), with heat and mass recoveries (HMR), and with mass and heat recoveries (MHR), have better thermodynamic performances when compared with the sorption cycle without mass recovery (MR0). The implementary order of mass recovery and heat recovery has strong influence on the efficacy of mass recovery while it has little influence on the efficacy of heat recovery. In sorption cycles with HMR and with MHR, the hot beds can be pre-cooled and cold beds can be pre-heated effectively during the switching process, and heat consumption from external heat source during desorption phase is thereby reduced. Mass recovery can enlarge cycled refrigerant mass due to the transfer of refrigerant gas between two sorption beds during mass recovery process. In comparison with sorption cycle with MR0, sorption cycles with MR, with HMR, and with MHR can generally improve the coefficient of performance (COP) and specific cooling power (SCP) by more than 20% and 16%, respectively. Especially, sorption cycle with MHR has the highest performance among different mass recovery processes due to the fact that MHR has the advantages of MR and HMR, and it can improve the COP by 46.7% when compared with the cycle with MR0