Locomotive driver-cabin adsorption air-conditioner powered by waste heat of internal combustion engine

Turbulent air caused by a locomotive running at high speed can be harmful to a person eardrums and, as such, all windows and doors of the driver-cabin have to be closed. However, the temperature inside the driver-cabin is usually higher than 43degreesC while the outside ambient temperature is approximately 33degreesC. As a result, engineers can easily feel fatigue. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a new type of air-conditioning system which is suitable for application in locomotive driver-cabins. At present there are many internal-combustion locomotives in China and few of them are equipped with air-conditioning systems. Those that are equipped usually use alternating currents to drive the compressors in which a lot of technical difficulties haven't been solved satisfactorily. This paper presents a novel adsorption air-conditioning system which employs the zeolite-water as working pairs and is driven by the waste heat from exhaust gas of internal combustion engine. This new system consists of an adsorber and a thermal storage device, then refrigeration capacity can be continuously and steadily provided to the locomotive driver-cabin for space cooling instead of electric vapor compression air-conditioning system. Experiments show that this new type of system can meet the demands of air conditioning for locomotive driver-cabin well. Experimental results are present. The characteristics of system are discussed as well.