A Critical Appraisal of Alternative Adsorption Refrigeration System Design Configurations: Enhancing Current Technologies with Innovative Approaches

Adsorption cooling technology (ACT) offers the potential for energy savings and supports environmental sustainability, aligning with current efforts to mitigate the impacts of global warming. However, the current technological advancements to improve its performance and maintain its presence in the market, appear insufficient to compete with the traditional vapour compression cooling systems due to poor energy performance, low COP, high initial cost, low specific energy density, intermittency issue, and reliability issues. The existing ACT operation relies on the use of static adsorbent beds which suffer from poor heat transfer process. Therefore, many research studies focus on addressing design challenges including increasing specific adsorption cooling capacity by using engineered porous materials in combination with environmentally friendly refrigerants. These new advancements can lead to significant improvement in the adoption of adsorption cooling technology beyond the current niche market. The focus of this paper is to appraise critically the various possible innovative mechanical arrangements of the adsorption solid desiccant components for application in heating, cooling and thermal energy storage. The work highlights the design innovation of the solid desiccant bed, particularly in the use of fluidised and moving adsorbent material between the heat source and heat sink. Therefore, the concept of the configurations in this appraisal with their pertinent potentials is intended to overcome the aforementioned identified bottlenecks often encountered by ACT. This appraisal is aimed to provide the required impetus for fast tracking the further development and wider application of adsorption cooling technology.