Funding boost for adsorption chiller research

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Power Partners is teaming up with the US Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Arkema on a US$2.54 million research programme to improve the efficiency and test new refrigerants in a type of air-con unit that runs on waste heat or heat from solar thermal collectors.

The funding was announced by DOE’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy, otherwise known as ARPA-E, and is part of the agency’s Building Energy Efficiency through Innovative Thermodevices, or BEET-IT programme.

Power Partners is a US manufacturer and marketer of energy-efficient, environment-friendly ECO-MAX adsorption chillers, which are a type of air-con powered by waste heat or by heat from solar collectors. They have few moving parts and uses almost no electricity to operate.

Adsorption chiller technology is applicable to retail stores, hospitals, universities, office complexes, data centers, trigeneration facilities, processing plants, manufacturing plants and government facilities.

During the three-year programme, the team will design, assemble and test an adsorption chiller that takes advantage of PNNL’s metal-organic heat carrier technology and new types of refrigerants. The goal is to utilise PNNL’s advanced materials and develop adsorption chillers that are smaller, more efficient and affordable enough to be used more frequently in commercial buildings.

“More efficient methods of cooling represent a great opportunity to reduce energy consumption in buildings and, in doing so, greenhouse gas emissions as well,” said PNNL Laboratory Fellow Pete McGrail, who is leading the research project. “The ARPA-E program represents a unique opportunity to move a recent laboratory discovery to the mainstream HVAC and commercial buildings marketplace in just a few years.”

While buildings account for 40% of energy use in the US, the basic approaches to cooling have not changed in decades. “We are excited about this joint effort to develop a commercially viable product that can meet the demand for energy conservation,” said Power Partners business segment leader Mike Stonecipher.

Power Partners will lead engineering and testing efforts as the project advances from a bench-scale prototype to a five-ton cooling capacity demonstration unit, utilising its state-of-the-art test facility.