In recent years, rapid economic development in many countries has resulted in an increase in energy consumption, and hence, a tremendous amount of industrial waste heat is emitted into the atmosphere. The recycling of the waste heat is of great significance in improving the thermal efficiency of systems.
Open cycle absorption heat pump is of great significance in improving the energy efficiency of the system by the latent heat recovery of the exhaust gas. The heat and mass transfer processes between solution and moist air are very complex and many studies have been carried out on them.
The results show that the open cycle AHP is very effective for the latent heat recovery of exhaust gas. As this process depends on the direct contact heat and mass transfer between exhaust gas and solution in the absorber, this process was mostly simulated by numerical analysis by discretizing the heat balance equations for moist air and solution along the flow direction. This method is applicable to the case of uniform distribution of air flow in the absorber. In reality, the velocity is different at each position of the absorber. In this case, the flow distribution inside the absorber should be taken into account together.
Ri Kwang Chol, a researcher at the Faculty of Heat Engineering, has built a mathematical model to describe the heat and mass transfer in the absorber of an open cycle absorption heat pump in consideration of the flow characteristics of air inside, and analyzed it by Ansys Fluent.
The results show that the absorption performance is affected by several parameters among which the solution flux has the greatest effect, and that the temperature and moisture content of outlet air depend on the inlet air velocity whose optimum value in the absorber is 1.5m/s.
© 2021 Kim Chaek University of Technology