Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Received: July 25, 2011 / Accepted: August 30, 2011 / Published: February 20, 2012.
Abstract: Many researchers have studied single and double effect absorption cycles based on first and second lows of thermodynamics.
But so far the relation of different parameters inside these cycles to the second law of thermodynamics in boiler and cooling tower has
not been investigated. In this paper, a system comprised of a series flow double effect water-Lithium bromide absorption chiller, a
boiler and a cooling tower is studied based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and also exergy analysis is investigated. For
this purpose, mass and energy conservation laws governing the system are written, and coefficient of performance of the system, exergy
destruction (loss) of each component and exergy efficiency have been calculated.
Corresponding author: Hamid Saffari, assistant professor, industry has developed. One of the central cooling
Ph.D., research fields: HVAC&R, LNG, two-phase flow. sources in buildings is chillers which are used in order
E-mail: saffari@iust.ac.ir.
262 Thermodynamic Analysis of Double Effect Absorption System along with Boiler and Cooling Tower
to cool the water required for ventilation systems. and sometimes unavailable [20-25]. On the other hand,
Absorption systems of water-lithium bromide are the price of conducting experiments for the evaluation
widely used in ventilation systems. of the performance of designed instruments is very
With the increasing demand for energy and high. Therefore, the practical tests have been replaced
restriction of the available energies, optimization with the numerical investigations in the field of
routines of energy consumption have been considered absorption chillers. As we saw, until now the
and the essentiality for the change of energy simultaneous analysis of absorption cycle, boiler and
consumption patterns has been taken into account. cooling tower has not been investigated, and the effect
Because of the high prices of electric energy generation, of changes of high pressure and low pressure
its replacement with heating energy will be very generators (HPG and LPG) temperatures on the boiler
outstanding. This replacement has been achieved in and cooling tower performances have not been studied.
absorption chillers, as their input energy is heat. On the In this paper, the purpose is to analyze simultaneously a
other hand, compression chillers use series flow double effect water-lithium bromide
carbon-felour-celour refrigerants which are destructive absorption cycle along with boiler and cooling tower
to the Ozone layer [1], but absorption chillers do not based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics.
use these substances. Apart from these advantages, due For this purpose, the mass and energy conservation
to not having compressor, absorption chillers have less laws governing the system are written and then the
moving and spinning parts, and therefore lower noise system coefficients of performance, exergy losses of
and vibration, and consequently higher useful lifetime. each component and exergy efficiency are calculated.
However, these systems have some disadvantages such
2. System Descriptions
as low coefficient of performances, crystallization,
corrosion, etc., which have attracted some Fig. 1 shows the analyzed system, which is
investigations. composed of a chiller, a cooling tower and a boiler.
The single effect water-lithium bromide cycle has The chiller of this system is a series flow double
been analyzed based on the first law of effect absorption chiller which is shown in Fig. 2. The
thermodynamics [2], second law of thermodynamics [3] cycle includes two generators, a condenser, an
and exergy [4-6]. Ref. [7] focuses on the analysis of evaporator, a pump, two solution heat exchangers
single effect cycle for cooling and heating applications, (SHEs), two solution pressure reducing valves and two
and Ref. [8] focuses on combined heat and power expansion valves. This system has four temperature
generation applications. Similar analysis has also been levels which include high pressure generator (HPG)
investigated for double effect water-lithium bromide temperature, low pressure generator (LPG)
cycle [9-13]. Some investigators have also compared temperature, condenser temperature and evaporator
the performances of single and double effect cycles temperature, and also three pressure levels which are
based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics low pressure in evaporator and absorber, medium
[14-17]. Aljundi et al. [18, 19] have also separately pressure in condenser and low pressure generator
analyzed the cooling towers. The analysis mentioned (LPG), and high pressure in high pressure generator
above were the static analysis of water-lithium bromide (HPG).
absorption cycles. Apart from these, some references During the performance of the chiller system,
have dynamically analyzed the performance of these rarefied solution is pumped from generator to HPG.
systems [20, 21]. The results of experimental Between the absorber and HPG, the solution passes
investigations in absorption chillers are very limited through two recycling heat exchangers and its
Thermodynamic Analysis of Double Effect Absorption System along with Boiler and Cooling Tower 263
temperature increases. The solution receives heat in mixture with low pressure and temperature enters the
HPG. The water vapour produced in line 11 exits from evaporator and causes the required cooling. The
HPG and enters LPG. The lithium bromide solution saturated vapour available in evaporator exits from line
with high concentration exits from the HPG in line 8, 3 and enters the absorber.
and after heat recycling in heat exchanger II enters the The concentrated solution of lithium bromide, from
LPG. In the LPG, the heat produced by water vapour line 17, enters the absorber and after the addition of the
exited from HPG causes the evaporation of the water in water exits from line 4 as a rarefied solution.
the lithium bromide solution, and the water vapour
3. Assumption and Input Parameters
produced in this stage exits from HPG in line 14 and
enters the condenser. After passing two solution heat The following assumptions have been made for the
exchangers and going under heat recycling, the highly analysis of the system:
concentrated lithium bromide solution enters the The cycle is assumed in steady state conditions;
absorber. Water vapour from line 14 and saturated Condenser outlet refrigerant is assumed to be
vapour from line 13 enter the condenser and exit as saturated liquid;
saturated liquid in line 1. This saturated liquid passes Evaporator outlet refrigerant is assumed to be
through an expansion valve, and as a two-phase saturated vapour;
Fig. 1 Double effect absorption cycle along with a cooling tower and a boiler.
The lithium bromide solution in the absorber of energy, while the second law is used to describe the
outlet is a concentrated solution, and its temperature is quality of energy and material. For the thermodynamic
equal to the absorber temperature; analysis of the absorption system the principles of mass
Pressure drop is assumed to be negligible in all the conservation, first and second laws of thermodynamics
cycle lines, heat exchangers and generators; are applied to each component of the system.
The surroundings temperature and pressure are
4.1 Conservation of Mass
25 C and 1 atm, respectively;
The system produces cooled water, and the Mass conservation law for each component is
generator is heated by the outlet hot water from boiler. written as:
For the analysis of this cycle, some parameters are m i m o (1)
considered to be the working and constant parameters. This law for each component of the cycle is written as:
These parameters are shown in Table 1 and include: m 8 m 11 m 7 (2)
evaporator temperature Tev, condenser temperature Tcd, m 11 m 12 m 13 (3)
absorber temperature Tab, HPG temperature Tgh, LPG m 8 m 9 m 10 (4)
temperature Tgl, heat exchangers efficiencies I, II,
m 10 m 14 m 15 (5)
solution pump efficiency p, required cooling load Qev,
m 15 m 16 m 17 (6)
inlet and outlet water temperatures to and from the
m 3 m 17 m 4 (7)
HPG and evaporator, outlet water temperature from
m 14 m 13 m 1 (8)
condenser and inlet water temperature to absorber. The
m 1 m 2 m 3 (9)
condenser pressure, the evaporator pressure, the
absorber pressure, the generator pressure, medium Mass conservation for the cooling tower:
pressure and the concentration of concentrated solution The cooling tower used in this system is the
can be calculated. It should be noted that induced-draft counter flow wet cooling tower. The
thermodynamic properties of lithium bromide-water mass conservation for the cooling tower is as follows:
m a1 m a2 m a (10)
solution are obtain from Ref. [25].
m 20 m 21 m 25 m 24 (11)
4. Thermodynamic Analysis m M m a ( 2 1 ) (12)
The basis of thermodynamics is stated in the first and m
v (13)
second laws. The first law describes the conservation m a
Table 1 Input parameters [10].
Parameter Description Symbol Value Unit
Cooling Cooling capacity Qev 300 kW
Condenser Saturated temperature inside condenser Tcd 35 C
Outlet cooling water temperature Tocd 32 C
Absorber Absorber temperature Tab 35 C
Inlet cooling water temperature Tiab 27 C
Evaporator Evaporator temperature Tev 4 C
Cooled water inlet temperature Tichw 12 C
Cooled water outlet temperature Tochw 7 C
HPG HPG temperature Tgh 130 C
Outlet hot water temperature Tohw 140 C
Inlet hot water temperature Tihw 148 C
LPG LPG temperature Tgl 80 C
HE I Heat exchanger I efficiency I 70 %
HE II Heat exchanger II efficiency II 70 %
Pump Pump efficiency p 95 %
Thermodynamic Analysis of Double Effect Absorption System along with Boiler and Cooling Tower 265
4.3 Analysis of the First Law of Thermodynamics for hM hwater (To ) (37)
the System Cp water 1.88 kJ / kg.o C (38)
The first law of thermodynamics for the system is
4.5 Analysis of the First Law of Thermodynamics for
written as:
Boiler
QC ,V mh V
i i
2
mh V
gZ i i
2
gZ Wc , v
The first law of thermodynamics for the boiler is
(22) written as follows:
In general, by neglecting the changes of kinetic and Qboiler m 18 ( h18 h19 ) (39)
potential energies in the system, and assuming that the
4.6 Analysis of the System Exergy
system is in the steady state conditions, the first law of
thermodynamics is written per unit mass as: Many researchers report that the best method for the
q hi he w (23) evaluation of a process is the exergy analysis [4-6].
And also the first law for different components in the Exergy is the maximum work that a flow or a system
system is written as: can do, when it goes from the present state to the state
m 11 h11 m 10 h10 m 14 h14 m 15 h15 0 (24) of equilibrium with surroundings. The exergy analysis
h7 h6 II (h8 h9* ) (25) of a system is the combination of the first and second
h13 h12 (26) laws of thermodynamics, and is defined as the
h17 h16 (27) maximum work that a system or flow does, when it is
Qgh m 8 h8 m 11h11 m 7 h7 (28) in equilibrium with special conditions [26]. The
Qcd m 14 h14 m 12 h12 m 1 h1 (29) analysis of the system exergy is as follows:
Qev m 1 (h3 h1 ) (30) T
Qab m 15 h16 m 3 h3 m 4 h4 (31)
m e m e
i i o o Q 1 o W E D 0
T
(40)
Qev The first two terms are the sum of the inlet exergy
COPchiller (32)
Qgh m 4 w p flow and outlet exergy flow. The third term is the heat
266 Thermodynamic Analysis of Double Effect Absorption System along with Boiler and Cooling Tower
exergy, where it is positive when the heat is transferred ideal gas. According to Kotas [26], the third term is
to the system. W is the mechanical work transferred to negligible and can be ignored, and the vapour and
or from the system and the last term, E D is the exergy compensated water flow have no exergy entering the
destroyed due to inside irreversibility. By neglecting tower, since they are in surroundings conditions. With
the kinetic and potential energies and noting that the these assumptions, we have:
chemical exergy is zero, the specific exergy is defined ECoolingTower m 21 e21 m 24 e21 m air eair flow o (55)
as [10]:
4.8 Analysis of the Second Law of Thermodynamics for
ex ( h h0 ) T 0 (s s 0 ) (41)
Boiler
And the exergy losses for each of the components of
the system are written as: The second law of thermodynamics for boiler is
Ecd m 14 e14 m 13e13 m 20e20 m 21e21 m 1e1 written as:
(42)
T
Eboiler m 19e19 m 18e18 Qboiler (1 o ) (56)
E ev m 2 e2 m 22 e22 m 3 e3 m 22 e22 (43) Tboiler
coefficient of the system. As it can be seen, when the increase of the HPG temperature, the total coefficient
LPG temperature increases, the total coefficient of of performance of the system decreases.
performance of the system increases while with the As it can be seen, Fig. 3 is in good agreement with
Table 2 The thermodynamic properties for different points of the cycle.
Point hi m i Pi si ei Ti
1 146.76 0.12 5.58 0.50 1.73 35
2 146.76 0.12 0.80 0.53 -6.72 4
3 2508.1 0.12 0.80 9.05 -186.9 4
4 86.20 1.728 0.80 0.21 22.97 35
5 86.23 1.728 52.17 0.21 22.97 35.0
6 146.85 1.72 52.17 0.40 25.65 64.5
7 238.10 1.72 52.17 0.65 44.47 109.0
8 284.73 1.66 52.17 0.74 66.32 130
9 193.48 1.66 52.17 0.49 47.04 84.2
10 193.48 1.66 52.17 0.49 47.04 84.2
11 2647.3 0.06 52.17 7.54 392.21 130
12 345.90 0.06 52.17 1.10 20.68 130
13 345.90 0.06 5.58 1.18 7.08 35
14 2564.7 0.06 5.58 8.35 78.09 80
15 193.81 1.60 5.58 0.45 59.88 80
16 133.20 1.60 5.58 0.27 52.17 0.48
17 133.20 1.60 0.80 0.27 52.17 0.48
18 623.32 6.77 4.50 1.82 85.02 148
19 588.95 6.77 4.50 1.73 75.11 140
20 127.32 25.92 2.00 0.44 0.22 39.9
21 133.66 25.92 2.00 0.46 0.34 45
22 49.39 9.06 2.00 0.17 1.22 12
23 16.32 9.06 2.00 0.05 3.24 4
24 112.56 25.92 2.00 0.39 0.05 28
25 127.32 25.92 2.00 0.44 0.22 39.9
Table 3 Calculated exergy losses. Table 4 The result for coefficient of performance, exergy
E (kW )
efficiency and circulation ratio.
Exergy losses
E cd 2.8734 Variable Value
Eev 4.5517 COPsystem 1.2879
E gh 8.2558 ex 0.0285
E gl 1.4365 CR 6.3705
Fig. 4 System coefficient of performance in terms of HPG and LPG temperatures (the result of Ref. [10]).
Fig. 5 The changes of exergy efficiency of the system with Fig. 6 The changes of the heat exchanged in absorber with
LPG and HPG temperatures. HPG and LPG temperatures.
LPG temperature increases, the heat exchanged in HPG temperature, but it decreases with the increase of
absorber decreases. Also the heat exchanged in LPG temperature, as it can be observed from Figs. 7
condenser and HPG does not vary with the changes of and 8.
Thermodynamic Analysis of Double Effect Absorption System along with Boiler and Cooling Tower 269