Experimental Study of LiCl/LiBr-Zeolite Composite Adsorbent for Thermochemical Heat Storage

Adsorption-based thermochemical heat storage is a promising long-term energy storage technology that can be used for seasonal space heating, which has received significant amount of efforts on the research and development. In this paper, the heat storage capacity of composite adsorbents made by LiCl + LiBr salt and 3A zeolite was investigated. The basic characteristics of composite material groups were experimentally tested, and it was found that the adsorption composite with 15 wt% salt solution had excellent adsorption rate and adsorption capacity, which was considered as the optimal composite material. Furthermore, the heat storage density of the composite material could be as high as 585.3 J/g, which was 30.9% higher than that of pure zeolite. Using 3 kg of the composite material, the adsorption heat storage experiment was carried out using a lab-scale reactor. The effects of air velocity and relative humidity on the adsorption performance were investigated. It was found that a flow rate of 15 m³/h and a relative humidity of 70% led to the most released adsorption heat from the composite material, and 74.3% of energy discharge efficiency. Furthermore, an adsorption heat storage system and a residential model were built in the TRNSYS software to evaluate the building heating effect of such heat storage system. It is found that the ambient temperature will affect the heating effect of the adsorption heat storage system. The coefficient of performance (COP) of this model is as high as 6.67. Compared with the gas boiler heating system, the adsorption heat storage energy can replace part of the gas consumption to achieve energy savings.

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