Study of new absorption refrigeration cycle operating with partially miscible fluids pairs

Abstract

In the present work a new configuration of absorption refrigeration machine based on phase separation has been studied. The main objective is to investigate the performance of this machine, using a number of binary systems (refrigerant absorbent) showing a partial miscibility and having a low critical solution temperature. A computer code has been developed for the calculation of the coefficient of performance (COP) of the machine as well as to study the influence of the operating conditions on this parameter, testing a binary mixture made of methyl diethyl amine (MDEA) as refrigerant and water as absorbent. The obtained results confirm the feasibility of this new cycle which can be regarded as a good alternative to classical cycle with no phase separation. The use of the computer code can be extended to test different working fluids for this machine, for an optimisation of the COP. © 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd.