Real operation of an innovative adsorption chiller prototype using water as refrigerant

[object This paper aims at presenting a new adsorption chiller prototype, employing water as refrigerant, specifically developed for mobile applications on-board of fishing vessels. The prototype was developed in order to maximize the volumetric cooling power by using an advanced management strategy with different adsorption and desorption times. It consists then of 3 adsorbers connected to a single evaporator and condenser. Moreover, continuous and quasi-constant cooling power delivered was guaranteed through the use of hybrid adsorbers, embedding microporous Silica Gel loose grains into aluminium finned flat tube heat exchangers previously coated with the Mitsubishi AQSOA FAM Z02 sorbent. A wide experimental characterization campaign aimed at measuring the performance of the innovative cooling machine was carried out at CNR-ITAE by a test rig for thermally driven cooling/heating machines, under typical boundary conditions of air conditioning applications. At nominal boundary conditions (i.e. TH~90°C, TL~18°C and TM~25°C), the cooling machine was able to deliver an average cooling power of 4.4 kW, an overall volumetric cooling power of 9.4 kW/m3, with a COP of 0.35. Object]