Opportunities for sorption cooling using low grade heat

We report on recent research and development in the field of cooling systems to be driven with low temperature heat. The economics of those systems to a large extent are determined by the heat exchangers required to operate the cycle. In this respect, fundamental conclusions will be derived using the concept of endo-reversible cycles. However, the main aspects to be discussed for real sorption cycles are the choice of the working pair and the development of new cycles. It will be shown that the choice of working pair is of minor importance with regard to the use of low grade heat. To adapt the cooling system to a special application like that, it is more beneficial to specially design new multistage sorption cycles. As an example, the design of a machine used in district heating networks is given. The results obtained from prototype test runs confirm the predicted performance. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.