Development of New Working Fluids, Components and Configurations for High Performance Absorption Heat Pumps |
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The objective of this project is the development of new working fluids and components for absorption heat pumps and refrigeration systems to enlarge the operation range, improve the performance and increase the energy efficiency in new configurations. The new working fluids to be devolopped are mixtures of ionic liquids with natural refrigerants, like ammonia,CO2 and water. The selection of suitable ionic liquids for each one of the refrigerants suggested will be made taking into account thermophysical properties such as melting point, solubility, thermal stability and viscosity, the basic absorption refrigeration cycle performance and the absorption capacity. For these mixtures, the relevant thermophysical properties necessary for the design of absorption refrigeration and heat pump systems will be determined experimentally and correlated. Also, models for predicting and estimating accurately the thermodynamic and transport properties will be developed, and they will be implemented in the frame of modeling and process simulation software for using in the modeling of new absorption cycles. The influence of the ionic liquid structure on the thermophysical properties and materials compatibility of the refrigerant/ionic liquid mixtures will be studied using the results obtained, in order to establish new strategies to develop improving mixtures. It will be implemented an analytical technique based in Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIR) to analyse in situ the composition of the mixture. Uni and multivariate calibration methods will be developed to correlate the NIR spectra with other relevant thermopyhsical properties (e.g. density, viscosity, thermal conductivity, etc.). The methodology developed is interesting for the optimization and control of the processes under study. Also, it will be studied new components not included usually in absorption equipment that can contribute to overcome the limitations of the conventional equipment. Among the new components, it will be considered membranes that can improve the absorption, desorption and separation processes making possible a better design of absorption devices, improve the compactness, reduce the first cost and extend its use to mobile applications like ships and terrestrial transport. Also, it will be considered the use of expanders for power generation in absorption refrigeration equipment. Both new working fluids and components will be integrated in a new generation of high performance heat pumps and refrigeration systems. The stationary and dynamic performance of these new systems will be studied in cogeneration and solar thermal applications. |
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REFERENCE: DPI2012-38841-C02-01 DURATION: 3 YEARS START DATE: 01/01/2013 |