Dynamic behaviors of adsorption chiller: Effects of the silica gel grain size and layers

This article presents the dynamic behaviour of a single effect two bed adsorption chiller employing adsorbent beds with various layers of loose grain configurations and silica gel particle sizes, which is based on the experimentally confirmed adsorption isotherms and kinetics data. Compared with the experimental data of conventional adsorption chiller based on RD silica gel-water pair, we found that the silica gel configuration in terms of layers and sizes provides an interesting result, that is, the “grain size sensitive” regime is realized for large adsorbent grains with more layers. From numerical simulation, it is found that the specific cooling power and the coefficient of performance are reduced and the peak chilled water temperatures are increased with increasing the grain size and grain layers. We also demonstrate here that the sizes and layers of adsorbents should be considered for the design of adsorption heat exchanger for adsorption cooling applications. •Investigates the performances of adsorption chiller with various adsorbent grains arrangements.•Presents both steady-state and dynamic behaviours of a two-bed solid sorption cooling system.•Both the heat and mass transfer resistances are taken into account in a distributed manner.•Results are compared with commercial adsorption cooler.