Development and lab-test of a mobile adsorption air-conditioner Salvatore Vasta, Angelo Freni*, Alessio Sapienza, Fabio Costa, Giovanni Restuccia CNR e Istituto di Tecnologie Avanzate per l’Energia “Nicola Giordano”, S. Lucia sopra Contesse 5, 98126 Messina, Italy article info Article history: Received 24 November 2010 Received in revised form 21 February 2011 Accepted 27 March 2011 Available online 3 April 2011 Keywords: Adsorption Air conditioning Zeolite Water abstract This paper is focused on the description of a mobile adsorption chiller for cooling in a truck cabin and its experimental performance. The prototype, designed and built at CNR e ITAE, consists of a double-bed adsorber connected with an evaporator and a condenser and driven by the low grade thermal energy coming from the engine coolant loop. Overall volume and weight of the machine are 170 dm 3 and 60 kg, respectively. Performance assessment was preliminarily carried out at ITAE laboratory under the typical EU car air conditioning conditions. The experimental results obtained showed that the system is able to deliver an Average Cooling Power ACP ¼ 1e2.3 kW and a Cooling COP ¼ 0.25e0.45, at a desorption temperature of about 90  C(T ev w 8e14  C and T con w 28e35  C). Afterwards, the cooling system was integrated in a real truck cabin (IVECO STRALIS) and tested on a laboratory test bench, where the engine cooling loop was simulated through an ideal heat source, so demonstrating that the chiller is able to provide cooling comfort to the passengers. ª 2011 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved. Conditionneur d’air mobile a ` adsorption : de ´ veloppement et essais en laboratoire Mots cle ´s : Adsorption ; Conditionnement d’air ; Ze ´olite ; Eau 1. Introduction Recent progresses in adsorption cooling systems demon- strated that such devices can efficiently replace conventional vapour compression chillers and heat pumps, especially when low grade waste or solar heat is available (Wang and Oliveira, 2006). Nowadays, adsorption chillers have been successfully tested mainly for stationary applications such as solar air conditioning and tri-generation (Henning, 2007; Critoph and Zhong, 2005). Thermally driven adsorption machines are also attractive for application in automotive air conditioning (Meunier, 2001). Indeed, utilization of waste heat from the I.C. engine to drive the adsorption chiller reduces fuel over- consumption for air conditioning, which can be translated to lower CO 2 emissions. Moreover, water is the most convenient and environmentally- friendly alternative to R134a, which is banned in new cars by 2011 according to the EU Directive 2006/ 40/EC. As far as the authors know, the first dedicated study on * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ39 090624296; fax: þ39 090624247. E-mail address: angelo.freni@itae.cnr.it (A. Freni). www.iifiir.org Available online at www.sciencedirect.com journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijrefrig international journal of refrigeration 35 (2012) 701 e708 0140-7007/$ e see front matter ª 2011 Elsevier Ltd and IIR. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.ijrefrig.2011.03.013