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Energy
EnergyProcedia
Procedia118 (2017) 000–000
00 (2017) 243–247
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia
2017 2nd International Conference on Advances on Clean Energy Research, ICACER 2017,
2017
2nd2nd International
International Conference
Conference on Advances
on Advances on Clean
on Clean Energy
Energy Research,
Research, ICACER
ICACER 2017,
2017,
7-9 April 2017, Berlin, Germany
7-9 April 2017 Berlin, Germany
7-9 April 2017, Berlin, Germany
Effect of
Thethe
15thVapour-Solution Interface
International Symposium on DistrictArea
Heatingon
andaCooling
Miniature
Effect of the Vapour-Solution Interface
Lithium-Bromide/Water Absorption Refrigeration System Area on a Miniature
Equipped
Assessing the feasibility
Lithium-Bromide/Water of using
Absorption the heat demand-outdoor
Refrigeration System Equipped
with an Adiabatic Absorber
temperature function withforana Adiabatic
long-term Absorber
district heat demand forecast
a,b,c
Salem M.a
Osta-Omara
ª,,*, Christopher
b
Micallefᵇ c c
I. Andrić *,Salem
A. Pina
M., P. Ferrão , J.ª *,
Osta-Omar Fournier ., B. Lacarrière
Christopher Micallefᵇ , O. Le Corre
ª ʼᵇ Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Malta, Msida MSD 2080, Malta
a
IN+ Center for Innovation, TechnologyEngineering
ª ʼᵇ Mechanical and Policy Research - Instituto
Department, Superior
University Técnico,
of Malta, MsidaAv.MSD
Rovisco
2080,Pais 1, 1049-001 Lisbon, Portugal
Malta
b
Veolia Recherche & Innovation, 291 Avenue Dreyfous Daniel, 78520 Limay, France
Abstract c
Département Systèmes Énergétiques et Environnement - IMT Atlantique, 4 rue Alfred Kastler, 44300 Nantes, France
Abstract
Developments in electronics brought about increasing power densities where passive cooling is insufficient to keep components
within acceptable
Developments temperaturebrought
in electronics limits. about
This rapid development
increasing reflectedwhere
power densities in increasing
passive interest
cooling in small capacity
is insufficient cooling
to keep systems.
components
Abstract
This
withinstudy focusestemperature
acceptable on alternative technology
limits. This rapidanddevelopment
new methodology to design
reflected small capacity
in increasing interest LiBr/water absorption
in small capacity coolingrefrigeration
systems.
systems
This studyusing refrigerant
focuses that is non-harmful
on alternative technology and to the
new environment.
methodologyThe main aim
to design of this
small paperLiBr/water
capacity is to investigate and optimize
absorption the
refrigeration
vapour-solution
Districtusing
systems heating interface
networksarea
refrigerant that (Aᵢ)
areis in a miniature
commonly
non-harmful to thelithium-bromide/water
addressed in the literature
environment. The as (LiBr/water)
mainoneaimof of
thethisabsorption
most is torefrigeration
effective
paper system
solutions for
investigate and equipped
decreasing
optimize the
the
with an adiabatic
greenhouse
vapour-solution absorberarea
gasinterface
emissions for (Aᵢ)
from specific a absorption
theinbuilding sector.
miniature rates
Thesein the adiabatic
systems
lithium-bromide/water absorber.
require A new
high investments
(LiBr/water) flow configuration
which
absorption are returned
refrigeration ofsystem
the LiBr/water
through the heat
equipped
solution
with
sales. inside
an Due to the
adiabatic adiabatic
theabsorber
changedforabsorber, using
specificconditions
climate a horizontal
absorption andrates spiral
in the groove
building adiabatic
renovationmade of perspex
absorber.
policies, Aheat
newplate
flow
demandwas created
configuration for this
in the future of thepurpose.
could This
LiBr/water
decrease,
new configuration
solution inside
prolonging thethe made it return
adiabatic
investment possible
absorber, tousing
period.control Aᵢ while spiral
a horizontal keeping the thickness
groove of the LiBr/water
made of perspex solutionforinside
plate was created the adiabatic
this purpose. This
absorber
new mainconstant
Theconfiguration
scope of throughout
made
this paper the
is totesting
it possible period.
to control
assess Aswhile
Aᵢ a result,
the feasibility the effect
ofkeeping
using ofdemand
theheat
the the solution
thickness of– the thickness
LiBr/water
outdoor on solution
temperature the absorption
insideforrate
function the could
adiabatic
heat demandbe
eliminated
absorber and
constantthus the effect
throughout of
the the vapour-solution
testing period. As interface
a result, area
the alone
effect ofon the
the absorption
solution rate
thickness
forecast. The district of Alvalade, located in Lisbon (Portugal), was used as a case study. The district is consisted of 665 could
on be
the investigated.
absorption rate This
couldled to
be
determine
buildings experimentally
eliminated and
that thus
varythe the construction
in effect
both optimal
of vapour-solution
the vapour-solution interface
period andinterface
typology. area
area inside
alone
Three on the absorption
weather adiabatic
scenariosabsorber
rate could
(low, andbefound
medium, to and
be equal
investigated.
high) Thistoled
three 140
to
district
cm² for a 45 W cooling system.
determine
renovationexperimentally
scenarios were thedeveloped
optimal vapour-solution interface deep).
(shallow, intermediate, area inside the adiabatic
To estimate absorber
the error, and found
obtained to be equal
heat demand to 140
values were
© 2017
cm² for aThe
45 Authors.
W cooling Published
system. by Elsevier Ltd.
©compared
2017 Thewith results
Authors. from a dynamic
Published by heatLtd
demand model, previously developed and validated by the authors.
Peer-review
© 2017 The under responsibility
Authors. Published ofElsevier
by the organizing
Elsevier Ltd. committee of ICACER 2017.
The results under
Peer-review showed that when only
responsibility of theweather change
scientific is considered,
committee of the 2nd theInternational
margin of error could beonacceptable
Conference Advancesfor on some
Cleanapplications
Peer-review
Energy under
Research.
(the error responsibility of the organizing
in annual demand was lower than 20% for all weather committee of ICACER 2017.
scenarios considered). However, after introducing renovation
Keywords: Thermally driven refrigeration system; Small cooling capacity; LiBr/water solution; Evaporation surface area
scenarios, the error value increased up to 59.5% (depending on the weather and renovation scenarios combination considered).
Keywords: Thermally driven refrigeration system; Small cooling capacity; LiBr/water solution; Evaporation surface area
The value of slope coefficient increased on average within the range of 3.8% up to 8% per decade, that corresponds to the
decrease in the number of heating hours of 22-139h during the heating season (depending on the combination of weather and
renovation scenarios considered). On the other hand, function intercept increased for 7.8-12.7% per decade (depending on the
coupled scenarios). The values suggested could be used to modify the function parameters for the scenarios considered, and
improve the accuracy of heat demand estimations.

© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +356-99357005.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and
* Corresponding [email protected]
E-mail address:author. Tel.: +356-99357005.
Cooling.
E-mail address: [email protected]
1876-6102 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Keywords: Heat demand; Forecast; Climate change
Peer-review
1876-6102 ©under
2016responsibility
The Authors. of the organizing
Published committee
by Elsevier Ltd. of ICACER 2017
Peer-review under responsibility of the organizing committee of ICACER 2017

1876-6102 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of The 15th International Symposium on District Heating and Cooling.
1876-6102  2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the 2nd International Conference on Advances on Clean Energy Research.
10.1016/j.egypro.2017.07.009
244 Salem M. Osta-Omar et al. / Energy Procedia 118 (2017) 243–247
Salem M. Osta-Omar et al. / Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000

1. Introduction

In absorption refrigeration systems, the absorber is the most critical component when it comes to optimising the
coefficient of performance of the system. In order to enhance the performance of the absorber the vapour-solution
interface area at the absorber is generally made as large as possible, consequently increasing the size and cost of the
absorber. Furthermore, the combination of absorption heat and mass transfer processes, which takes place within the
same component in the conventional absorbers, such as falling film absorber, complicates phenomena occurring in
these absorbers and increases the size of the absorbers [1, 2]. Furthermore, in the falling film absorber, the instability
of the solution sheet generated inside the absorber may reduce the vapour-solution interface area, which, in turn,
leads to the absorber being oversized. Additionally falling film absorbers are not adequate for use with viscous
LiBr/water solutions as the thickness of the falling film sheet obstructs water vapour absorption [3]. An adiabatic
absorber separates the absorption heat transfer process from the mass transfer process. The determination of the
optimal vapour-solution interface area in the absorber, helps reduce the size of the absorber to an adequate size
without the need of oversizing. Consequently, the vapour-solution interface area of the absorber and the thickness of
the LiBr/water solution inside the absorber have to be stabilised during the operation of the system in order to
overtake the drawback of having to install an oversized absorber.
To increase efficiency most compact absorber designs seek to increase the vapour-solution interface area. Such
designs include absorbers which use vapour bubbling through a liquid solution [4] and absorbers which use a spray
of fine solution droplets [5]. Both of these designs, however, are energy-intensive [6, 7]. To reduce the size of the
absorbers, Zacarías et al. [8] have investigated a design configuration where the LiBr/water solution droplets use a
full cone nozzle and Palacios et al. [3] have considered using a flat-fan sheet using an injector nozzle. Both methods
enhanced the absorption rate inside the absorbers and have the potential to reduce the size of the absorbers; however,
both methods require high LiBr/water solution mass flow rates which are associated only with large capacity
absorption refrigeration systems. Therefore these two configurations of LiBr/water solutions inside the absorbers are
not ideal in small cooling capacity systems such as the miniature LiBr/water absorption refrigeration system
equipped with an adiabatic absorber investigated in this study. There are many variables which affect the absorption
rate inside the absorber, the main ones being the solution mass flow rate, the solution inlet concentration, the
solution inlet temperature, the absorber pressure and the vapour-solution interface area [8, 9, &10]. All the system
variables, except for the vapour-solution interface area, were kept constant during the tests which were performed to
investigate the effect of Aᵢ on the absorption rate in order to obtain the optimal Aᵢ for the system.

2. Description of the Experimental Apparatus

A miniature LiBr/water absorption refrigeration system equipped with an adiabatic absorber was designed and
constructed, having a cooling capacity of 45 W at 10ºC, which is also the minimum system temperature of the
evaporator. The maximum temperature of the system was set by the generator at 80ºC. The designed heat input in
the generator was 69 W. Heat rejection was performed in a helical coil condenser operating at 35ºC, and the
adiabatic absorber operating was set 30ºC. These components were assembled into the system which is illustrated in
Fig. 1. The key to the numbers labelling the various instruments, connection pipes and components in Fig. 1 is
provided in Table 1 below.
The system was equipped with two vacuum pressure transducers to measure the high and low pressures of the
system in the generator and absorption chamber respectively. The system was also instrumented with two electrical
conductivity sensors to determine the LiBr mass concentrations of the weak LiBr/water solution at the outlet of the
generator (at the bottom of the U-tube) and the strong LiBr/water solution at the outlet of the adiabatic absorber (at
the bottom of the J-shaped pipe) using the methodology described by Osta-Omar et al. [11]. Since their results
showed good agreement to the results of the experimental validation, this method has been chosen as the tool for
determining of the LiBr/water solution concentration. Additionally, sight glasses were positioned throughout the
system, as detailed in Table 1, in order to reduce heat transfer along the tubes walls and to visualise the flow at these
positions. Furthermore, twenty T-type thermocouples were used at various locations, as shown in Fig. 1.
 Salem M. Osta-Omar et al. / Energy Procedia 118 (2017) 243–247 245
Salem M. Osta-Omar et al. / Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000

Fig. 1. Schematic of the experimental apparatus.

For an absorption refrigeration system using a LiBr/water solution pair as the working fluid, a U-tube (Fig. 1,
Point 5) can be used in which a small pressure difference between the high pressure side of the system (generator
and condenser) and the low pressure side (absorber and evaporator) is maintained by a column of weak LiBr/water
solution [12,13]. Furthermore, during the operation of the absorption refrigeration system unit, no overflow of the
LiBr/water solution from the generator heat exchanger to the condenser was observed. This was due to the use of the
separator as a liquid trap and use of the head of the generator as a rectification column in order to reduce the risk of
passing a LiBr/water solution with the vapour to the condenser.
The absorption chamber comprised six parts, as shown in Fig. 1: the top part of the chamber (21), the bottom part
of the chamber which is the evaporator (23), the adiabatic absorber (24), the perspex pipe which is used as a plate
stand for the adiabatic absorber and outlet pipe of the strong LiBr/water solution (25), another perspex pipe which
was used as the outlet pipe of the refrigerant overflow (29), and the perspex cylinder which made the absorption
process visible (22). The top circular plate incorporated four ports: the inlet of the LiBr/water solution (20), the inlet
of the liquid refrigerant (14), the air purge pipe connected to a gate valve (19), and the vacuum pressure sensor. The
bottom circular plate also incorporated two ports: the outlet of the strong LiBr/water solution (26) and the outlet of
the refrigerant overflow (29).
The adiabatic absorber shown in Fig. 1 (24) was made of a circular flat basin having a diameter of 0.24 m. Since
the absorption process is adiabatic and is a non-isothermal process, the adiabatic absorber was made of perspex
material with a spiral groove of 1 cm in width and 1 mm in depth. The incoming LiBr/water solution enters the
246 Salem M. Osta-Omar et al. / Energy Procedia 118 (2017) 243–247
Salem M. Osta-Omar et al. / Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000

absorption chamber at the outer end of the spiral groove and, while absorbing the vapour refrigerant, is driven by the
spiral groove to the inner end, at which point, the LiBr/water solution which becomes strong by this time enters the
sink, which is at the centre of the circular flat basin and is connected to the perspex pipe that is used as a plate stand
for the adiabatic absorber and the outlet pipe of the strong LiBr/water solution, and leaves the absorption chamber.
Six tests were performed to investigate the effect of Aᵢ on the absorption rate for the purposes of this study. For each
test, an adiabatic absorber with a different spiral groove length was used (210 cm, 175 cm, 140 cm, 105 cm, 70 cm,
and 35 cm). The resulted exposed vapour-solution interface areas of the adiabatic absorbers were, therefore, 210 cm²,
175 cm², 140 cm², 105 cm², 70 cm², and 35 cm² for tests 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 respectively.

Table 1. Components of the miniature LiBr/water absorption refrigeration system equipped with an adiabatic absorber.
Point Component Description Point Component Description
1 Electric heater. 26 Outlet pipe of strong solution leaving the
absorption chamber.
2 Base of the generator. 27 Service valve fixed on outlet of the strong
solution leaving the absorption chamber.
3 Separator. 28 J-shaped pipe (as liquid solution trap) after the
electrical conductivity sensor.
4 Head of the generator. 29 Overflow pipe.
5 U-tube. 30 Service valve.
6 Filling valve at the generator. 31 Overflow flow meter.
7 Sight glass fixed on the vapour pipe. 32 System vessel.
8 Service valve fixed on the vapour pipe. 33 Inlet pipe of strong solution to the circulation
pump.
9 Helical coil condenser heat exchanger. 34 Circulation pump (peristaltic pump).
10 Filling valve fixed on outlet of the condenser 35 Inlet pipe of strong solution entering the strong
solution sub-cooler.
11 Refrigerant flow meter 36 The strong solution sub-cooler
12 Service valve fixed on outlet of the liquid 37 Outlet pipe of strong solution leaving the strong
refrigerant flow meter. solution sub-cooler.
13 Capillary tube. 38 Inlet pipe of strong solution to the solution pump.
14 Inlet pipe of the liquid refrigerant entering the 39 Solution pump (peristaltic pump).
absorption chamber.
15 Sight glass fixed on outlet of the U-tube. 40 Inlet pipe of strong solution to the generator.
16 Weak solution sub-cooler 41 Service valve fixed on the bypass tube.
17 Service valve fixed on outlet of the weak solution 42 Sight glass fixed on the inlet pipe of strong
sub-cooler. solution to the generator.
18 Accumulator. 43 Inlet pipe of the cooling water entering the weak
solution sub-cooler.
19 Air purge valve. 44 Outlet pipe of the cooling water leaving the weak
solution sub-cooler.
20 Inlet pipe of the entering solution to the 45 Inlet pipe of the cooling water entering the strong
absorption chamber. solution sub-cooler.
21 Upper aluminium circular plate of the absorption 46 Outlet pipe of the cooling water leaving the
chamber. strong solution sub-cooler.
22 Perspex cylinder (to visualise the absorption 47 Outlet pipe of the cooling water leaving the
process). condenser.
23 Lower aluminium circular plate (evaporator heat 48 Equilibrium pressure pipe.
exchanger) of the absorption chamber.
24 Perspex circular plate (the adiabatic absorber). 49 Drain valve.
25 Perspex pipe (as plate stand for the adiabatic
absorber).

3. Results

Fig. 2 shows the effect of the vapour-solution interface area on the absorption rate of the miniature LiBr/water
absorption refrigeration system equipped with an adiabatic absorber. As can be seen the absorption rate decreased
linearly when the Aᵢ decreased below the optimal value of 140 cm². For tests 1, 2, and 3 the absorption rates were
1.15 ml/min, while for tests 4, 5, and 6 the absorption rates were 0.95 ml/min, 0.5 ml/min, and 0.25 ml/min
respectively.
 Salem M. Osta-Omar et al. / Energy Procedia 118 (2017) 243–247 247
Salem M. Osta-Omar et al. / Energy Procedia 00 (2016) 000–000

Fig. 2. Graph showing the variation of the absorption rate with the vapour-solution interface area.

4. Conclusions

The investigation presented in this paper revealed that the optimal vapour-solution interface area of the 45 W
miniature LiBr/water absorption refrigeration system equipped with an adiabatic absorber is 140 cm². It is expected
that, for systems with different cooling capacities, the effect of the Aᵢ on the absorption rate follows the trend shown
in Fig. 2 but with different values. Therefore, the linear equation with a coefficient of determination of 97.8 %
shown Fig. 2 can be used to verify the effect of the Aᵢ on the absorption rate below the optimal area for any cooling
capacities of systems that apply the same flow configuration of the LiBr/water solution inside an adiabatic absorber
as the one used in this investigation. Due to the reaction that took place between the LiBr/water solution and the
copper tubes during the experiential investigation presented in this work, it is advisable in future to study the effect
of the corrosive inhibitors, which are made to be added to the LiBr/water working fluid as aqueous solutions, to
provide corrosion resistance to the metallic components of the miniature LiBr/water absorption refrigeration system
equipped with an adiabatic absorber.

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