Gas-fired absorption systems for space conditioning in recreational vehicles

You are here: Homepage > Search

Gas-fired absorption systems for space conditioning in recreational vehicles

Garimella, S. / Christensen, R.N.

Two gas-fired absorption systems intended for use in recreation vehicle space conditoning are described and evaluated in this paper. One system uses an ammonia/water cycle, while the other cycle uses ammonia/sodium thiocyanate as the fluid pair. Several variations of the basic single-effect absorption system are considered for both fluid pairs. For example, the effect of incrementally including energy recovery motors, recuperative refrigerant heat exchangers, and generators with cocurrent and counter-current configurations were systematically investigated. The resulting cycles were incorporated into conceptual designs with air-coupled heat exchangers located on the roof of the vehicle. Parametric analyses on heat exchanger lengths and air flow rates wee performed to facilitate system/component design and optimization. It was found that the Coefficient of Performance for the ammonia/salt systems was up to 10-15 % higher than that of similar ammonia/water systems. A refrigerant/refrigerant heat exchanger results in a significant improvement in COP (15-23 %). The system COP also depends strongly on the generator configuration: a counter-current design increases COP by approximately 16 % over the co-current design.