Experimental assessment of a cooling device with no moving parts exploiting a salinity difference

Experimental assessment of a cooling device with no moving parts exploiting a salinity difference Since the beginning of the previous century the most dominant technology that provided cooling for diverse needs is the mechanical vapor compression cycle. Still nowadays the greatest fraction of room cooling and refrigeration as well as a significant portion of room heating is achieved by means of the same technology developed in the early 1930s. Despite its robustness, reliability and scalability, a solution that comprises operating fluids that do not have a detrimental impact to the environment when released has not been found yet[1]. At the same time the term sustainability has become even more relevant the last decade leading into an increased demand for less energy consumption and for the use of environmentally friendly methods and materials. Within this context many alternative technologies are in development especially in the field of room cooling. The aim of this thesis is the experimental investigation and numerical modeling of a passive cooling heat pump. What has to be clarified from the beginning is that the candidate didn’t participate and wasn’t involved in any way in the conception, design, the initial experimental investigation and the initial numerical modeling of the prototype. In particular the prototype had already been designed by the members of the Small Lab of Politecnico Di Torino, and not the candidate of this thesis, and a study had already been conducted involving the experimental investigation and the development of a numerical model that describes its operation. Those activities were published in the form of an article in preprints.org, as indicated in the bibliography[2], prior to this thesis. The candidate was provided with the already designed prototype and the above mentioned article in order to further investigate experimentally the feasibility of the device and to develop his own numerical model. Considering the operation of the prototype, the processes driven by a salinity difference between two water solutions have been exploited in order to realize a device that is able to provide cooling. Operations occur without mechanical moving parts. The goal of the activity is to demonstrate the feasibility of the described alternative passive cooling device. In conjunction with the experimental activity, a numerical model has been developed to predict the steady state operation in various environmental conditions. The present text is organized as follows. In chapter 1 a brief introduction is made initially, considering the problem of cooling, the vapor compression alternatives that are under development and the motivation for designing the device under study. In chapter 2 a description of the cooling device is made along with the corresponding operating principles. In chapter 3 the experimental setup and procedures are explained and then the results are presented. In chapter 4 the numerical model is presented and a comparison is made between the theoretical values and those obtained during the experimental activities. Chapter 6, finally, gives a conclusion to the thesis and a proposal for future work.