The reaction wave analysis in an open adsorption thermal energy storage reactor

Abstract

Adsorption thermal energy storage (ATES) is one of the most promising approaches to achieve efficient utilization of solar energy. The available sorption reaction wave model reveals the mechanism of heat transfer in the reactor during the adsorption process. However, the model can only be used to identify whether a reactor can provide stable output. In this paper, the expressions used to quantify the general performance of the ATES reactor were derived with the wave parameters of adsorption reaction waves. To analyze the distributions of air temperature and moisture concentration in the ATES reactor, an experimental bench was built and a numerical model was developed. It was found that the temperature gradient, the negative of the concentration gradient and the adsorption rate in the reactor all presented the characteristics of a reaction wave. The predictions by the proposed expressions were in agreement with the experimental data with the maximum relative error less than 6.5 %. The proposed method achieves a fast estimation of the thermal performance of reactor from a new perspective.