Modeling of adsorption heat pumps with heat regeneration

Both heat and mass transfer rates have determinant effects on the efficiency of adsorption heat pump systems. Both phenomena are taken into account in this paper; in particular, it presents an analysis of intraparticle mass transfer limitations on the performance of cooling machines with thermal wave heat regeneration. It is shown that, if slow diffusing refrigerants are used, the performance of the adsorption heat pump will be markedly affected. However, if the cold production is the key issue for a specific application, regardless to the value of the COP, the effect of using slow diffusing refrigerants will not be very significant and can be easily compensated by increasing the cycle time. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.