Dynamic study of adsorbers by a new gravimetric version of the Large Temperature Jump method

This paper presents a new experimental setup devoted to measure the ad-/desorption kinetics of an Ad-HEX (adsorbent+heat exchanger) under typical boundary conditions of an Adsorption Heat Transformer (AHT) as well as the results of the first test campaign carried out. The experimental apparatus can be considered as a gravimetric version of the known Large Temperature Jump method. In fact, the dynamic evolution of the uptake during the isobaric ad-/desorption stages is directly measured by a weighing system suitable to work in the range of 5–600g of sample mass (adsorbent+HEX) with the accuracy ±0.1g and the time response shorter than 0.1s The experimental campaign was conducted on an Ad-HEX composed of granules of a commercial SAPO-34 adsorbent placed on a flat type aluminum HEX, under operating conditions reproducing two different thermodynamic cycles (Th=90°C, Te=10°C, Tc=30 and 35°C), typical for adsorption air conditioning.