Silicone composite foams for adsorption heat pump applications

The development of multi-functional adsorbent materials and systems is an important design step to improve engineering and technology of adsorption heat pumps (AHP). In this work a new engineering solution was proposed in order to better manage classical needs in AHP. The proposed idea is based on the development of an innovative multi-functional composite silicone-zeolite foams. In particular foamed zeolite-silicone structure is obtained by combined crosslinking and foaming reactions due to dehydrogenative coupling of siloxane constituents. The physico-chemical characterisation of the composite material aimed to evaluate its industrial applicability is discussed. The results obtained evidenced that the morphology of the composite foams is related to the interaction between zeolite filler and silicone matrix. Furthermore adsorption tests evidenced that zeolite embedded in the foam is effectively able to participate to sorption and desorption processes, giving to these adsorbents materials greater advantages than other zeolite containing systems (e.g. coating, picking, direct growth etc....) for heat pump applications.