Investigation of thermal characteristics of strontium chloride composite sorbent for sorption refrigeration

Thermal characteristics such as thermal conductivity, permeability, and sorption kinetics, which determines the overall sorbent performance, play as the critical roles in the sorption refrigeration system. In this paper, composite strontium chloride (SrCl2) developed with a host matrix of Expanded Natural Graphite (ENG) has been comprehensively investigated under different densities and mass ratios of salt. Results indicate that the composite sorbent has overall good heat and mass transfer performance. The highest thermal conductivity is 3.07 W/(m.K), which is 15 times higher than normal granular SrCl2. The permeability of composite sorbent ranges from 9.5 × 10−10 to 9.36 × 10−14 m2. Sorption performance of composite SrCl2 has also been tested, and the results showed that for the sorption amount ranged between 400 and 700 (g/kg SrCl2) ammonia at 40 min in the adsorption process. These quantitative results obtained from this study can be used as crucial parameters to conduct the simulation modelling for the SrCl2-ENG sorption system