Adsorptive heat storage/amplification:

 new cycles and adsorbents

The increasing demands for cooling/heating, depletion of fossil fuels, and greenhouse gases emissions promote the development of adsorption heat transformation (AHT). This emerging technology is especially promising for converting low-temperature heat sources, like environmental, solar, and waste heat. AHT is based on the reversible processes of exothermal adsorption (heat generation/rejection) and endothermic desorption (heat absorption/storage). Among the known AHT applications (cooling, heat pumping, amplification, and storage), the cooling and heating are nowadays at the advanced level of development confirmed by several chillers/(heat pumps) available in the market. On the contrary, the adsorption heat storage and amplification are less developed, thus gaining an increasing attention of the scientific community. The researchers are mainly focused on the developing new cycles for heat storage/amplification and advanced adsorbents specialized for these cycles. In this lecture, we will review the state-of-the-art in the fields of adsorption heat storage/amplification. The new, recently suggested, cycles (e.g. a "Heat from Cold" cycle for upgrading the ambient heat) will be described and analyzed. The new adsorbents developed for adsorption heat storage/amplification will be presented. Special attention will be paid to the problem how to harmonize the adsorbent with the cycle under various climatic conditions. The lab-scale units constructed for verification of the cycle feasibility and adsorbent efficiency will be also presented and analyzed. Finally, the problems and outlooks of adsorption heat storage/ amplification will be discussed.