Experimental study on thermal performance of novel trapezoidal reactor

This paper experimentally researches the thermal performance of a thermochemical reactor for the zeolite 13X-water. It aims to improve the poor thermal conductivity of the zeolite 13X with a novel thermochemical reactor design using added copper strips (Case 2) or fins (Case 3). For all cases of the thermochemical reactor with and without copper strips or fins, the influences of the relative humidity and flow rate of inlet air on outlet temperature and water temperature lift were recorded. Results reveal that 1) the copper strips reactor achieved a higher water temperature than copper fins or smooth tube; 2) copper fins increased the outlet reactor temperature than the other two cases; 3) the whole energy efficiency of the reactors gradually increased from 0.48-0.53-0.78 in the order of Case 1 to Case 3. During the whole discharging process, it was concluded that the outlet temperature of the copper strips reactor was approximately 10°C higher than that of the copper strips or smooth tube, however, its water temperature lift was 4.34°C lower than Case 2 and 0.87°C higher than Case 1. Moreover, the copper fins reactor presented the highest energy efficiency of 0.78. A simplified methodology is proposed for the analysis of the zeolite 13X-water working pairs discharging process through the identification of the critical points as result of the thermal performance of the reactor.