DESIGN AND PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A METAL HYDRIDE AIR-CONDITIONER

✍ Scribed by M. Ram Gopal; S. Srinivasa Murthy

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1997
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 264 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0363-907X
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1099-114x(199701)21:1<55::aid-er248>3.0.co;2-m

✦ Synopsis

The design and performance aspects of a 3•5 kW (1 ton) cooling capacity metal hydride air-conditioner working with a ZrMnFe/MmNi Al pair are presented. The analysis is based on the heat transfer and reaction kinetics of coupled beds containing ZrMnFe alloy on the hot side and MmNi Al on the cold side. The effects of important design and operating parameters, viz. cycle and delay times, bed thickness, effective thermal conductivity, air velocity and operating temperatures, on system performance are studied. The performance of the system is characterized by the mass of the alloys required and the COP. The results show that the initial and running costs of the system depend mainly on the internal and external heat transfer characteristics of the hydride heat exchangers. It is shown that a 1 cm ID tube, a cycle time of 3 minutes, an effective thermal conductivity of about 2•5 W m\ K\ and air velocity of about 3 m s\ result in optimum performance in terms of alloy inventory and COP.