Silica gel microfibres by electrospinning for adsorption chillers

A. Freni, L. Calabrese, A. Malara, P. Frontera and L. Bonaccorsi

Energy, 2019, vol. 187, issue C

Abstract: Silica gel is one of the most used porous material in commercial water adsorption chillers for the low cost and large market availability. In most applications, silica gel is used as granules with limitation in heat transfer efficiency and material hydrothermal stability. In this work, preliminary results of a new hybrid coating made of microfibres obtained by the electrospinning of silica gel/polymer solutions are presented. Polyacrylonitrile (20 wt%) and different silica gel powders (80 wt%) were mixed and electrospun to produce fibrous coatings on aluminium surfaces. Thermal analysis of the hybrid microfibres by TGA-DSC showed that the coating was stable up to T = 290 °C with no evidence of thermal degradation of the microfibres. Measurements of water adsorption isobars of silica gel microfibres at P = 11 mbar and P = 42 mbar showed that the water adsorbed was 80 wt% of the water uptake capability of the original silica gel demonstrating that the polymeric component of microfibres did not occluded the adsorbing material porosity.

Keywords: Water adsorption; Silica gel; Heat pumps; Microfibres (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544219316615
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:187:y:2019:i:c:s0360544219316615

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2019.115971

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().