Overview of Adsorption Cooling System based on Activated Carbon : Alcohol Pair

The depletion of ozone layers and climate problems have been calling for rapid developments in chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrochlorofulorocarbons (HFCs) free air conditioning and heat pump technologies. Using environmental benign refrigerants such as alcohol in adsorption air-conditioning systems will reduced the production of unwanted ozone depleting substances, whilst activated carbon as adsorbent can achieve higher adsorption capacity and rapid adsorption uptake rates. Additionally, it’s also environmental friendly and harmless. From this viewpoint, utilization of activated carbon adsorption system using natural alcohol as refrigerants has been in demand. The researchers put efforts to enhance the performance of adsorption systems by modification in adsorbent properties, optimizing the absorbers’ heat exchanger design, and so on towards making this technology competitive with the available cooling system in the market. The objective of this paper is to review on the past efforts of various kinds of researches and methods used to validate the efficiency and suitable of activated carbon as the adsorbent material, with ethanol/methanol for cooling and refrigerant applications