Accepted Manuscript

Title: CFD simulation and experimental validation of ethanol adsorption onto

activated carbon packed heat exchanger

Author: Skander Jribi, Takahiko Miyazaki, Bidyut Baran Saha, Shigeru

Koyama, Shinnosuke Maeda, Tomohiro Maruyama

PII: S0140-7007(16)30348-6
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/doi: 10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2016.10.019
Reference: JIJR 3462

To appear in: International Journal of Refrigeration

Received date: 29-6-2016

Revised date: 27-9-2016
Accepted date: 24-10-2016

Please cite this article as: Skander Jribi, Takahiko Miyazaki, Bidyut Baran Saha, Shigeru
Koyama, Shinnosuke Maeda, Tomohiro Maruyama, CFD simulation and experimental validation
of ethanol adsorption onto activated carbon packed heat exchanger, International Journal of
Refrigeration (2016), http://dx.doi.org/doi: 10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2016.10.019.

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 CFD Simulation and Experimental Validation of Ethanol Adsorption

onto Activated Carbon Packed Heat Exchanger

Skander Jribia,b,c, Takahiko Miyazakia,b,d, Bidyut Baran Sahab,e, Shigeru Koyamaa,b,d ,

Shinnosuke Maedaf, Tomohiro Maruyamaf

(a)
Faculty of Engineering Sciences, Kyushu University, Kasuga-koen 6-1, Kasuga-shi,
Fukuoka, 816-8580, Japan
International Institute for Carbon-Neutral Energy Research (WPI-I2CNER), Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka-shi, Fukuoka 819-0395,
(b)
Japan

(c) Laboratory of Electro-Mechanical Systems (LASEM), National Engineering School of Sfax,

University of Sfax, Route Soukra km 3.5, Sfax, 3038, Tunisia
(d) Interdisciplinary Graduate School of Engineering Sciences,
Kyushu University, Kasuga-koen 6-1, Kasuga-shi, Fukuoka
816-8580, Japan
(e) Mechanical Engineering Department, Kyushu University, 744 Motooka, Nishi-ku, Fukuoka-shi,
Fukuoka 819-0395, Japan
(f) Global Technology Division, Calsonic Kansei Corporation, 8 Sakae-cho, Sano-shi, Tochigi 327-0816,
Japan

Corresponding Author: Skander Jribi, Dr. Eng.

E-mail: skander.jribi@gmail.com
Telephone: +81-92-583-7869
Fax: +81-92-583-7833

Page 1 of 28
 Highlights:

Temperature response of finned tube adsorber was simulated using Fluent

software

Good agreement between experimental and simulated temperatures were

obtained

Heat released by gas friction was higher than the heat of adsorption

Refrigerant gas shows difficulty in reaching adsorbent with higher thicknesses

Abstract

Experimental validation of simulated adsorber/desorber beds for sorption cooling

applications is essential to obtain reliable results. We have conducted rigorous

simulation of the adsorption process occurring in a finned tube adsorber utilizing

2D-axisymmetric geometry. The adsorber uses activated carbon-ethanol as

adsorbent-refrigerant pair. It is cooled with water at nearly 30C and experiencing a

sharp pressure increase of ethanol from 0.95 kPa initially to 6 kPa. The simulated

temperatures at adsorbent thicknesses of 0, 1, 5 and 10 mm from tube outer diameter

showed an increase in adsorbent temperature up to 20 C from its initial temperature.

They were slightly higher at starting of adsorption and consistent with experimental

data at higher flow time. The validated CFD model will serve as a base for evaluating

and optimizing activated carbon-ethanol adsorption cooling cycle. It can be extended

also to different adsorber designs and other adsorbent-adsorbate pairs.

Page 2 of 28
Keywords:

2D-axisymmetric; activated carbon; CFD simulation; cooling; ethanol; finned tube

adsorber.

Nomenclature

A pre-exponential factor (s-1)

C inertial loss coefficient (m-1)
cp heat capacity (kJ kg-1 K-1)
D diameter (m)
E energy (kJ), characteristic energy for D-A Eq. (kJ kg-1)
F force vector (N)
g gravitational acceleration (m s-2)
h enthalpy (kJ kg-1)
J mass flux (kg m-2)
k diffusion time constant (s-1), thermal conductivity (W m-1 K-1)
n heterogeneity parameter (-)
p, P pressure (Pa)
q uptake (kg kg-1)
Qst heat of adsorption (kJ kg-1)
R gas-law constant (kJ kmol-1 K-1)
Sm mass source term (kg m-3 s-1)
Sh heat source term (W m-3)
t time (s)
T temperature (K)
v velocity magnitude (m s-1)
v overall velocity vector (m s-1)
Greek
permeability (m2)
porosity (-)
adsorbent micropore volume (cm3 g-1)
density (kg m-3)
dynamic viscosity (Pa s)
gradient
stress tensor (Pa)
Superscripts

Page 3 of 28
* equilibrium
Subscripts
a apparent, activation
eff effective
g gas phase
l liquid
m mesh
p porous, particle
ref reference
s solid, saturated
Acronyms
AC activated carbon
ACS adsorption cooling system
CFD computational fluid dynamics
D-A Dubinin-Astakhov
F.S. full scale
LDF linear driving force
NIST National Institute of Standards and Technology
RHS right-hand side
UDF user defined function
VCS vapor-compression cooling system

1. Introduction

Adsorption cooling systems (ACS) are seen to be a feasible alternative to widely used

vapor-compression cooling systems (VCS). In fact, they can be driven by waste heat or

solar energy. Waste heat from power plants and internal combustion engine can be as

high as 50 % of fuel consumed in these systems (Wang et al., 2010); while solar energy

is abundant in summer when the cooling effect is the most needed. In counterpart, the

VCS stress electric grids in summer if driven by electric energy and increase fuel

consumption in motor vehicle. Additionally, the ACS use natural and benign refrigerants

Page 4 of 28
such as water (Pan et al., 2016), ethanol (Brancato et al., 2015; Saha et al., 2006),

methanol (Gong et al., 2012), ammonia (Li et al., 2010), CO2 (Jribi et al., 2014),

R1234ze (Jribi et al, 2013), etc. Whereas, the VCS employ high global warming

potential (GWP) refrigerants such as R134a (GWP = 1430), R404a (GWP = 3922) and

R410a (GWP = 2088) for refrigeration and air-conditioning systems (Mota-Babiloni et

al., 2015). Moreover, the ACS do not possess moving or rotating parts which makes

them more reliable, maintenance-free and appropriate for mobile air-conditioning.

Despite the merits of ACS over VCS, they still suffer from low efficiency, bulkiness and

higher cost. Therefore, volume reduction and performance enhancement are necessary.

Researchers nowadays are working on improving the low heat and mass transfer

properties of the adsorbent by developing new materials and producing consolidated

and composite materials.

Chakraborty (2016) developed a thermodynamic framework to calculate the enthalpy

and entropy of adsorbent-adsorbate system from adsorption isotherm data and gave

guidelines in developing carbonaceous materials to maximize the adsorption uptake of

non-polar gases at low pressures. Sun and Chakraborty (2015) developed an adsorption

kinetics equation of water on mono and multi layers silica gel adsorbent without

performing experimental measurements; which will allow accurate performance

prediction of newly developed adsorbent-adsorbate based adsorption cooling cycle.

Wang et al. (2012) increased the thermal conductivity and thermal diffusivity of

granular activated carbon (AC) by 150 and 72 times, respectively, by consolidating it

with expanded natural graphite treated with sulphuric acid. Thermal conductivity of

zeolite also increased to 0.36 (from 0.09 W m-1 K-1 initially) when consolidated and to

8.3 W m-1 K-1 if mixed with metallic foam (Guilleminot et al., 1993). However,

Page 5 of 28
consolidation reduces adsorbent permeability which decreases the adsorption rate

(Choudhury et al., 2013).

Adsorber beds with fins are another way to intensify the heat transfer between

cooling/heating source and adsorbent. Zhang and Wang (1999) reported that both

coefficient of performance (COP) and specific cooling power (SCP) were increased by

using longitudinal fins in Zeolite 13X-water cylindrical adsorber. Niazmand and

Dabzadeh (2012) found that bed size can be dramatically reduced by adding annular

fins for the same cooling power and little decrease of COP.

Performance enhancement of adsorption cooling system were also performed with

numerical and CFD simulations. Numerical optimizations were used essentially for

simple adsorber-heat exchanger designs such as cylindrical adsorber with annular or

longitudinal fins. Riffel et al. (2010) developed a model capable of comparing the

performance of both consolidated and non-consolidated adsorbents. Ali and

Chakraborty (2015) showed the performance variation with cycle time of different

adsorbent-water pairs using lump model. Effect of fin height and fin spacing on the

COP and SCP were investigated by Niazmand and Dabzadeh (2012). Lately, heat and

mass transfer simulations in adsorber/desorber beds were carried out with CFD

softwares. alar (2016) carried out 2D-axisymmetric simulation of a finned tube

adsorber working in a thermal wave adsorption cooling system. The effect of fin design

parameters on temperature distribution inside the adsorber were investigated. He found

that fins enhanced the heat transfer in the adsorber significantly comparing to finless

bed. 3D modeling and simulation of longitudinal finned tube adsorber powered by

thermal engine exhaust gas and employing activated carbon-methanol pair were

investigated by Ramji et al. (2014) for mobile air-conditioning application. They found

Page 6 of 28
that higher heat source temperature increased the cooling power and resulted in

relatively longer cycle time.

In this study, CFD simulations of a finned tube adsorber employing activated

carbon-ethanol as adsorbent-refrigerant pair were carried out using Ansys Fluent

software. We used 2D-axisymmetric solver and reduced the geometry to half fin pitch

distance. Temperatures at different locations in the adsorber were monitored and

compared with experimental data. This simulation will allow accurate performance

investigation and optimization of activated carbon-ethanol based adsorption cooling

cycle.

2. CFD model

Experimental testing of finned tube adsorber using AC-ethanol as adsorbent-refrigerant

pair were investigated previously in our laboratory (Makimoto, 2013; Makimoto et al.,

2010). In this study, we performed heat and mass transfer simulation of ethanol

adsorption onto activated carbon. The simulation was carried out with Ansys workbench

software R16.2. The geometry was plotted then meshed using DesignModeler and

Ansys-Meshing, respectively. After that, CFD simulation was performed by Ansys

Fluent. The mathematical model used in Fluent consisted of confirmed adsorption

isotherm and kinetics equations incorporated onto mass, energy and momentum

conservation equations. The boundary conditions utilized have been extracted from

experimental data. Details of geometry, materials, governing equations and boundary

conditions used in the simulation were presented hereafter.

2.1. Geometry

The activated carbon was packed in the finned tube heat exchanger, having a length of

700 mm, and sealed with mesh and casing. Fin thickness, fin pitch, fin height, tube

Page 7 of 28
inner and outer diameters and mesh inner diameter were 0.53, 3.7, 10, 26, 29 and 52.7

mm, respectively. Cooling water circulates inside the tube and ethanol gas is

surrounding the heat exchanger as shown in Fig. 1. Adsorbent temperatures at

half-length of adsorber were recorded with calibrated K-type thermocouples ( 0.1 K)

for thicknesses of 0, 1, 5 and 10 mm from tube outer diameter. As the adsorber is

axisymmetric, the geometry is reduced to 2D. Furthermore, the calculation domain is

limited to half-space between two fins due to existence of symmetry plans.

2.2. Meshing

We used fine meshing with maximum element size of 0.265 mm. The simulated domain

was divided onto 357 elements and 464 nodes. The following mesh quality was reported

from Fluent:

- Minimum orthogonal quality = 0.999583 where orthogonal quality ranges from 0 to 1

and values close to 0 correspond to low quality.

- Maximum ortho skew = 4.16891 10-4 where ortho skew ranges from 0 to 1 and

values close to 1 correspond to low quality.

2.3. Materials and porous zone properties

2.3.1. Materials

The materials used in the simulations were copper for fins and tube, ethanol for the gas

phase and activated carbon of type Maxsorb III as solid material of porous zone. Copper

properties were imported from Fluent database. Real gas ethanol properties were loaded

into Fluent from embedded NIST Refprop v9.1 database. And, activated carbon

properties were the particle density (p), specific heat capacity (cp,p) and thermal

conductivity (kp).

A mass of 0.259 kg of Maxsorb III were packed in the adsorbent space of 9.867

Page 8 of 28
 10-4 m3. The apparent density is then a = 262.47 kg m-3.

The adsorbent porosity (), which is the ratio of gas phase volume by the total

volume, is evaluated by:

a
1 a (1)
s

The second term of right-hand side (RHS) of Eq. 1 corresponds to the volume

occupied by solid whereas the third term represents the volume of micropores.

Considering a micropore volume of Maxsorb III of = 1.7 cm3 g-1 and skeletal

density of s = 2200 kg m-3 (Saha et al., 2011), the porosity is then = 0.4345.

The adsorbent particle density which is the ratio of particle mass by particle volume

including the micropore volume is therefore p = s / (1 +.s) = 464.13 kg m-3.

The thermal conductivity of adsorbent particles (kp) is not only that of solid

adsorbent (ks), but also depends on the ethanol uptake adsorbed (q). However this

value is not exactly known due to lack of measured value. The effective thermal

conductivity of dried Maxsorb III at atmospheric condition was found to be 0.062

W.m-1.K-1 ( 5 %), measured with C-Therm TCi thermal conductivity analyzer. In

this study, adsorbent-adsorbate thermal conductivity is considered constant and

equals to kp = 0.2 W m-1 K-1.

The specific heat capacity of adsorbent particle (cp,p) is also a function of solid

adsorbent specific heat capacity (cp,s = 1.375 kJ kg-1 K-1 (Biloe et al., 2001)) and

adsorbate specific heat capacity considered as liquid phase (cp,l) (Chakraborty et al.,

2007). It can be expressed as:

c p , p c p , s qc p ,l (2)

2.3.2. Porous zone properties

Page 9 of 28
The effective thermal conductivity and heat capacity of porous zone are expressed by

Eqs. (3) and (4), respectively (Ansys Inc., 2015).

k eff k g 1 k p (3)

c p p
g c p , g 1 p c p , p ` (4)

The permeability () and inertial loss coefficient (C) of homogenous porous media were

estimated using the semi-empirical Ergun equation (Ergun, 1952).

2 3
Dp
(5)
150 1 2

3 . 5 1
C (6)

3
Dp

For average adsorbent particle diameter Dp = 70 m (El-Sharkawy et al., 2014), =

8.379 10-12 m2 and C = 3.447 105 m-1.

2.4. Governing equations

The mathematical model consists of confirmed adsorbent-adsorbate mass transfer

equation as well as mass, momentum and energy conservation equations (Ansys Inc.,

2015).

2.4.1. Adsorbent-adsorbate mass transfer correlation

The adsorption rate of ethanol onto Maxsorb III has been approximated from

experimental data using linear driving force (LDF) equation (Jribi et al., 2016) given by:

dq
k q *
q (7)
dt

where k is the diffusion time constant given by Arrhenius equation (Eq. 8) and q*

denotes the equilibrium adsorption uptake correlated with Dubinin-Astakhov (D-A)

adsorption isotherm equation (Eq. 9) (El-Sharkawy et al., 2014).

10

Page 10 of 28
 E
k A exp a (8)
RT

RT Ps
n
*
q q s exp ln (9)
E P

A = 132.89 s-1, Ea = 22.97 kJ mol-1, qs = 1.2 kg kg-1, E = 139.5 kJ kg-1 and n = 1.8

denote the pre-exponential factor, activation energy, saturated uptake, characteristic

energy and heterogeneity parameter, respectively.

2.4.2. Mass conservation equation

The mass conservation equation in porous media is given by:

g
g v S m (10)
t

where the mass source term (Sm) corresponds to the mass of ethanol gas adsorbed by the

porous media.

dq
S m 1 p (11)
dt

2.4.3. Energy conservation equation

Considering thermal equilibrium between solid and fluid in porous media, the energy

conservation equation is given by:

t
g

E g 1 p E s v g E g p k eff T h j J j v S h (12)
j

2
p v
E is the energy calculated by E h where h is the enthalpy given by:
2
T
h T ref
c p dT . Sh is the heat source term corresponding to the heat added to the porous

zone by adsorption process and is expressed by:

dq
S h 1 p Q st Q st S m (13)
dt

11

Page 11 of 28
Here Qst denote the average heat of adsorption of Maxsorb III-ethanol pair evaluated by

Uddin et al., (2014) as 1002 kJ kg-1. The mass and heat sources, Sm and Sh, were

implemented in Fluent as user defined functions (UDFs).

2.4.4. Momentum conservation equation in porous media

In the momentum conservation equation (Eq. (14)), the momentum source term (F)

accounts for the viscous and inertial losses in homogeneous porous media (first and

second terms on the RHS of Eq. (15), respectively).

g g
p g g F (14)
t

1
Fi vi g C v vi (15)
2

2.5. Boundary conditions

The boundary conditions used in this study were pressure inlet in adsorbent upper

surface and convection in tube inner surface.

2.5.1. Pressure inlet boundary condition

The adsorber was initially at equilibrium pressure of 0.95 kPa. Then, it is connected to

an evaporator containing saturated vapor ethanol and initially at 8.7 kPa. The evaporator

pressure was recorded using 10 kPa absolute pressure sensor of type Validyne

Engineering AP10 (accuracy of 0.25% of F.S.). Whereas, the gas phase pressure in the

adsorber was measured by a 100 kPa digital pressure gauge of type DG-920

manufactured by Tokyo Aircraft Instrument Co., Ltd. (TKK) and having an accuracy of

0.2% of F.S.

The adsorber pressure increased sharply until reaching 5.95 kPa. After that, it followed

the evaporator pressure as shown in Fig. 2. The evaporator pressure decreased due to

refrigerant evaporation. Later, the pressure in evaporator increases as the latent heat of

12

Page 12 of 28
evaporation is removed by a water circulator set at 20 C.

The temperature of refrigerant entering the simulation domain was also included in this

boundary condition. It was measured experimentally in the mesh side (Tm) and its

temperature profile is presented in Fig. 3. The mesh side temperature increased first due

to ethanol gas compression caused by the pressure lift. Then, it decreased as the

pressure decreased and the heat was dissipated to the surrounding adsorbent and heat

exchanger. After that, it increased again as the pressure increased and also the adsorbent

temperature becomes higher than the mesh temperature. Finally it decreased as the heat

of the adsorber was removed by the cooling water.

Both experimental adsorber pressure and gas phase temperature were fitted with

polynomial functions then inserted onto Fluent in the pressure inlet boundary condition

using UDFs.

2.5.2. Convection boundary condition

Cooling water at nearly 30 C flowed inside the tube at 3 l/min. Directly after

connecting the adsorber to evaporator, the recorded temperatures at inlet and outlet

increased sharply as shown in Fig. 4 and the temperature difference between the two

reached 1.8 C. The water temperature at the middle of tube, estimated as the average of

inlet and outlet temperatures, was fitted to polynomial functions and inserted onto fluent

as the free stream temperature using UDF. Whereas the convection heat transfer

coefficient was evaluated using the Dittus and Boelter correlation (Dittus and Boelter,

1930).

3. Results and discussion

The governing equations were solved in a coupled manner. That is, the momentum

equation and the pressure-based continuity equation are solved simultaneously as shown

13

Page 13 of 28
in Fig. 5. Constants used in the simulation were summarized in Table 1. We used also

variable time step of 0.5, 1 and 2 s for flow time up to 100, 200 and 3757s, respectively.

Fig. 6a and 6b show the simulated temperatures at adsorbent thicknesses of 0, 1, 5 and

10 mm from tube outer diameter and their corresponding experimental temperatures. At

starting of adsorption, the temperature in the adsorber increased sharply then decreased

gradually. It reached experimentally 46.5, 49.5, 51.8 and 63.8 C, respectively. The

simulated temperature also presented the same trend as shown in Fig. 6a. The maximum

temperature values obtained were higher than experimental data of 2.3, 2.7, and 2.2 C

for T0, T1, and T5, respectively, and lower of 8.6 C for T10. We can notice also a small

delay in reaching the maximum temperature of 7 to 24 s comparing to experimental data.

Table 2 summarizes the values of maximum temperature from experimental and

simulated data at the different thermocouple positions. The simulated data were found to

be slightly higher than the experimental data at starting of adsorption. This is probably

due to the heat dissipated in the heat exchanger casing and adsorber wall which were

not included in the simulation. At higher flow time, the simulated temperatures matched

correctly the experimental data within 1 C as shown in Fig. 6b.

The temperature increase in the adsorber is caused by the release of heat of adsorption,

gas compression and gas friction in the porous media. By disabling the heat source term

of the energy conservation equation (Sh = 0), one can get the temperature response due

to pressure increase and viscous and inertial losses. Fig. 7 shows simulated temperature

profiles with and without heat generated by adsorption process. We observed that the

heat produced by gas compression and friction is more important than that added due to

release of heat of adsorption. Also, the simulated temperatures without heat source were

lower than experimental data. They reached 46 and 48.9 C at adsorbent thicknesses of

14

Page 14 of 28
1 and 10 mm, respectively. Whereas the maximum experimental temperatures were as

high as 49.5 and 63.8 C, respectively.

Simulated temperature contours of tube, fin and porous zone at assorted flow time were

presented in Fig. 8. An animation file showing the temperature change in the adsorber is

also provided (Animation file here). We observed that the heat generated by adsorption

process and pressure increase was evacuated from the porous zone to the cooling source

via fins and tube. The latter have almost the same temperature due to high thermal

conductivity of copper material. However, the adsorbent in contact with tube and fin

surfaces possess lower temperature than that at the middle between 2 fins and farer from

tube. So, the fins enhanced the heat removal for higher adsorbent thicknesses. A further

study on the optimum fin height and fin pitch will be carried out in future.

Fig. 9 shows the effect of the momentum source term on pressure inside the porous zone.

At starting of adsorption, the adsorbent far away from the inlet boundary condition had

lower pressure due to viscous and inertial losses. The maximum pressure change

between inlet and tube surface was found to be 1.51 kPa at 59 s. As the time increases,

this pressure difference decreases and becomes nearly equal the inlet pressure for higher

flow time. For example, it became 0.403, 0.249, 0.095, 0.04 and 0.019 kPa at flow time

of 76, 100, 500, 1000 and 2000 s, respectively. We can see also from Fig. 9 that the

pressure at the inlet matched correctly the experimental gas phase pressure in the

adsorber as set in the boundary condition.

Limitations of the study:

In this study, we used Equilibrium thermal model that is the solid and the gas of the

porous zone have the same temperature. This hypothesis is valid when there is small

difference in the thermal conductivities of the two materials. Although, the

15

Page 15 of 28
adsorbent-adsorbate thermal conductivity (0.2 W/(m.K)) is ten times that of ethanol gas

(~0.02 W/(m.K)), the simulated data were found to be consistent with experimental data

which means that the over mentioned assumption is valid. We also used constant values,

due to lack of experimental data or empirical equations, of (i) adsorbent-adsorbate

thermal conductivity, (ii) heat of adsorption, (iii) porosity, etc. which depend generally

on the amount adsorbed (q).

4. Conclusions

A detailed CFD model of heat and mass transfer in an activated carbon-ethanol finned

tube adsorber has been presented. The geometry and boundary conditions used were

identical to those of an experimental apparatus tested in our laboratory. Simulation

results showed that the sharp pressure increase of ethanol, from 0.95 to 6 kPa, raised

adsorbent temperature more than 50 C from initial temperature of 30 C. Later on, the

temperature decreased gradually as the heat is removed by the cooling source through

fins and tube which enhanced significantly the heat transfer. By comparing simulation

results with and without including the heat source, we found that the temperature

increase was caused mainly by gas compression and gas friction rather than the release

of heat of adsorption. Simulation results showed also that the pressure decreased with

adsorbent thickness increase due to viscous and inertial losses. Temperature at different

adsorbent thicknesses matched correctly the experimental data at higher flow time and

they were slightly overestimated at starting of adsorption. The validated mathematical

model will be used to evaluate and optimize the performance of activated

carbon-ethanol based adsorption cooling system.

Acknowledgment

This research is supported by TherMAT project of New Energy and Industrial

16

Page 16 of 28
Technology Development Organization (NEDO), Japan

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Fig. 1 - Schematic of finned tube adsorber.
Fig. 2 - Experimental recorded pressure in evaporator (red) and adsorber (green) and
fitted pressure used in the inlet boundary condition (dashed black line).
Fig. 3 - Experimental gas inlet temperature at mesh side (green) fitted with polynomial
functions (dashed black line) and used in the pressure inlet boundary condition.
Fig. 4 - Experimental inlet (blue)/outlet (red) water temperatures to/from adsorber and Comment [A1]: AUTHOR: Two captions for
figure 4 and 5 are slightly different, used figure
estimated temperature at the middle of tube (green) fitted with polynomial functions legend captions. Please check.

(dashed black line) and used in the convection boundary condition.

Fig. 5 - Flow chart of solving governing equations in Fluent coupled model
Fig. 6 - Temperature profiles at different adsorbent thicknesses at starting of adsorption
(a) and at higher time (b): experimental (dashed) vs. simulated (lines).
Fig. 7 - Simulated temperatures with and without heat of adsorption (dashed and dotted
lines, respectively) compared with experimental data (lines) for adsorbent thicknesses of
1 (red) and 10 mm (green).
Fig. 8 - Temperature contours of tube, fin and porous zone at different flow times.
Fig. 9 - Effect of viscous and inertial losses on pressure: simulated pressures at mesh
side (red line) and at 0 mm adsorbent thickness (blue line) compared with experimental
gas phase pressure in adsorber (dashed black line).

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 Table 1-Constants used in the simulation.

Value Unit Description

Adsorbents properties
p 464.1 kg.m-3 adsorbent particle density (Section 2.3.1)
cp,s 1.375 kJ.kg-1.K-1 adsorbent specific heat (Biloe et al., 2001)
kp 0.2 W.m-1.K-1 adsorbent-adsorbate thermal conductivity (Section 2.3.1)
Porous zone properties
0.4345 Porosity (Section 2.3.1)
8.379 10 -12
m2
permeability (Section 2.3.2)
C2 3.447 105 m-1 inertial loss coefficient (Section 2.3.2)
Adsorption parameters
-1
A 132.89 s pre-exponential factor (Jribi et al., 2016)
-1
Ea 22.97 kJ.mol activation energy (Jribi et al., 2016)
-1
q0 1.2 kg.kg saturated amount adsorbed (El-Sharkawy et al., 2014)
-1
E 139.5 kJ.kg characteristic energy (El-Sharkawy et al., 2014)
n 1.8 heterogeneity parameter (El-Sharkawy et al., 2014)
-1
Qst 1002 kJ.kg average heat of adsorption (Uddin et al., 2014)
Fin and tube dimensions (Makimoto, 2013)
di 26 mm tube inner diameter
do 29 mm tube outer diameter
dm 52.7 mm mesh inner diameter
0.53 mm fin thickness
l 3.7 mm fin pitch
h 10 mm fin height

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 Table 2-Maximum experimental and simulated temperatures at different thermocouple
positions.
Adsorbent Experimental data Simulation data t (s) T (C)
thickness (mm) Time (s) Temperature Time (s) Temperature (texp. tsimu.) (Texp. Tsimu.)
(C) (C)
0 60 46.5 84 48.8 -24 -2.3
1 64 49.5 80 52.2 -16 -2.7
5 63 51.8 76 54.0 -13 -2.2
10 63 63.8 70 8.6 -7 8.6

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 Refrigerant
Tmesh
Mesh

T10
Calculation
domain

Porous T5
activated
carbon Fin

T1

T0 Tube

Cooling water
Cooling water

Fig. 1.

Fig. 2.

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Fig. 3.

Fig. 4.

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Fig. 5

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Fig. 6

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 Fig. 7.

Legend t = 58 s t = 73 s t = 107 s

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t = 157 s t = 557 s t = 1057 s t = 3757 s
Fig. 8.

Fig. 9.

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