Heat Transfer Enhancement on the Adsorber of Adsorption Heat Pump

Three methods for improving the heat transfer of the adsorber have been developed in this paper. First, an electrically conductive polyaniline was applied for enhancing the thermal conductivity of adsorbent bed. A thermally conductive composite of polyaniline and adsorbent was prepared by chemical oxidative in situ polymerization of aniline onto the surface of adsorbent particles. A thin thermal conducting net on the surface of the adsorbent particles was grown. The experimental results indicated that the thermal conductivity of this composite could be increased to approximately 4 times that of the raw adsorbent. Second, the adsorbent bed was shaped by a compressing process. This process can reduce the thermal resistance among the adsorbent particles and the contact thermal resistance between the adsorbent bed and the heat exchanger. The thermal conductivity of the shaped adsorbent bed itself from the tests can be increased 30% when the density of the solid adsorbent bed is 1.5 times that of its original density. Furthermore, the adsorption capacity of the above treated adsorbent did not decrease obviously. Third, a proper design of adsorber has been introduced and analyzed. Further tests of this design will be conducted soon.