Energy 118 (2017) 1361e1369

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Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy

An improved cycle for large temperature lifts application in water-

ammonia absorption system
X. Chen, R.Z. Wang*, S. Du
Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Key Laboratory for Power Machinery and Engineering of M.O.E, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan
Road, Shanghai, 200240, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In a water-ammonia absorption refrigeration system, the rectification heat is dissipated to the sur-
Received 7 March 2016 roundings without recovering in traditional single-effect cycle. An improved cycle is proposed for the
Received in revised form utilization of rectification heat when the chiller is operated under a large temperature lift or low heat
4 November 2016
source temperature when GAX (Generator-Absorber heat eXchange) effect is not available. This cycle
Accepted 4 November 2016
Available online 12 November 2016
combines the solution recirculation and heat integration of rectifier to improve the COP. The rectification
heat recovery is implemented through separating the strong solution leaving the absorber. One branch
flows through the solution heat exchanger while the other branch flows through the rectifier. The result
Keywords:
Water-ammonia absorption refrigeration
shows 24% increase in COP compared with traditional single-effect cycle under certain working condi-
Solution recirculation tions. In this paper, the selection of split ratio is investigated by varying the working condition. The effect
Rectification heat recovery of solution recirculation and rectification heat recovery is comparatively studied through case studies. In
Large temperature lift general, the most operations in traditional single-effect cycle can be replaced by the improved cycle. A
graphic aid for the assistance of the choosing suitable cycle is presented as well.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction to improve the system performance, the researches on internal heat

Nowadays the thermally activated water-ammonia absorption
refrigeration become more and more popular, as it uses ammonia
as refrigerant and water as absorbent, the both are environmentally
benign and cheap [1]. The water-ammonia absorption systems are
found to be very promising because of no crystallization, no
leakage, compactness and the evaporation temperature can be
below 0
C in comparison with LiBr/water absorption systems.
Besides, the water-ammonia working pair is also found in power
generation [2], cogeneration [3] and combined cooling, heating and
power systems [4].
The Coefficient of Performance (COP) is quite low for water-
ammonia absorption systems because of relatively high irrevers-
ibilities associated with internal and external heat transfer pro-
cesses such as absorption, solution heat exchange and generation
process [5], and it has been shown that the internal losses con-
tributes more than half of the total entropy production [6], but the
absorption systems are usually driven by low grade thermal energy
like industrial waste heat, which makes them prominent. In order
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: rzwang@sjtu.edu.cn (R.Z. Wang).
recovery have been extensively undertaken [7]. The common
strategy for internal heat recovery in traditional single-effect cycle
is through a solution heat exchanger (SHE) and refrigerant heat
exchanger (RHE). The other internal heat processes those can be
integrated include condensation and absorption heat. In LiBr/water
absorption systems, the condensation heat can be recovered to
enhance thermal performance [8,9], while in water-ammonia ab-
sorption systems, Ezzine et al. simulated multi-effect cycle in which
the condensation heat is recovered [10], however, which is not
commercially viable because that the condensation pressure (4 bar)
is quite high so as to obtain useful condensation heat.
As for the absorption heat recovery, one unique characteristic of
the water-ammonia absorption refrigerator is the presence of
temperature overlap between the absorber and generator under
certain working conditions [11], part of absorption heat, therefore,
is recuperated in an ammonia Generator-Absorber heat eXchange
absorption cycle (GAX), the superiority of GAX cycle makes the
system very attractive in air-conditioning application (evaporation
temperature about 5
C). The reported improvement in COP can be
as high as 30% [12]. Velazquez et al. stated that the GAX effect be-
comes less obvious as an increase of the temperature difference
between the condenser and evaporator (temperature lift) [13]. GAX

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.11.014
0360-5442/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1362 X. Chen et al. / Energy 118 (2017) 1361e1369

Nomenclature Subscripts
w weak solution
COP Coefficient of Performance s strong solution
SHE Solution heat exchanger cond condensation
COND Condenser evap evaporation
REC Rectifier rec rectification
GEN Generator b bubble temperature
RHE Refrigerant heat exchanger upper upper value
ABS Absorber opt optimum value
EVAP Evaporator max maximum value
q heat load, kW H heat source
x split ratio T Traditional
f circulation ratio SR Solution Recirculation
h enthalpy, kw/kg SRS Solution Recirculation with Split
ε improvement in COP S Split
T temperature,
C WSRS Weak Solution Recirculation with Split
P pressure, bar

absorption compression cycle provides a solution to large tem- carried out on a commercial package called Engineering Equation
perature lift applications, an extreme low evaporation temperature Solver (EES) [23] with excellent thermodynamic equations solving
of 80
C can be achieved without undermining the GAX effect capacities. The main feature of EES is the built-in thermodynamic
with the assistance of compressor [14]. The additional installation properties of water-ammonia. Besides, a user defined code and
of electrical equipment, however, makes the system unreliable and graphical user interface (GUI) can be established and performed on
costly. Another alternative is resorted to higher temperature heat the platform.
source, but the generation exit temperature is limited to 200
C to
avoid the corrosion caused by chemical reaction of ammonia, on
2. Improved cycle description
the other hand, the very large irreversibilities at higher heat tem-
perature would deteriorate the thermal performance, resulting in
There are two major features in this improved cycle as can be
slowly increasing of COP [15]. WGAX cycle is developed to reduce
seen from Fig. 1. The first is solution recirculation (SR), the weak
this high temperature [16]. This approach relies on the high tem-
solution is cooled down to a temperature T15 at state 15 before it
perature heat source and complex implementation.
enters the SHE whereas the strong solution leaving the solution
Unlike LiBr/water absorption systems, the purification of
pump at state 2 flows through the absorber for preheating at state
ammonia plays a critical role in water-ammonia absorption sys-
16. The SR feature shown in Fig. 1 is a simplified configuration, a
tems so as to guarantee better thermal performance [17]. In fact, the
more detailed implementations of weak solution precooling and
quantity and quality of rectification heat monotonically increases as
strong solution preheating can be found in Fig. S1 from
the evaporation temperature goes down. Hence, the extraction of
the rectification heat for improving the performance is feasible. The
research on the internal heat recovery mainly involves with ab-
sorption heat recovery [18,19]. A somewhat related on the sepa-
ration of strong solution was studied by Fontalvo et al. in the
combined power/cooling application (Goswami cycle) [20]. The
rectification heat is intuitively extracted by the total strong solu-
tion, but the improvement is insignificant due to the negative
impact on the heat received inside the SHE. A considerable amount
of heat extracted in the rectifier is ultimately released through the
absorber [21]. A more systematical way for utilization of rectifica-
tion heat is to divide the strong solution into two separated
branches. An optimum cycle which integrates rectification heat is
derived through pinch technology by Du et al. [22]. A portion of
strong solution is used to extract rectification heat and the
improvement in COP is at least 20% compared with a traditional
single-effect one. The derived cycle is presented graphically,
nevertheless, the fundamental and mechanism behind cannot be
directly understood from the graph. The interaction of heat re-
covery in rectifier and SHE is not revealed. More importantly, the
split ratio of the strong solution is needed to be fully elaborated.
In this paper, an improved cycle is proposed. The theoretical
insights on the key parameters like split ratio, the size of SHE and
COP are investigated through parametric studies. Two case studies
are accompanied to prove the validity of the theory presented for Fig. 1. The schematic of the improved cycle SHE- Solution heat exchanger, COND-
the improved cycle, the interaction of heat recovery from rectifier, Condenser, REC- Rectifier, GEN-Generator, RHE- Refrigerant heat exchanger, ABS-
SHE and solution recirculation is studied. The simulations are Absorber, EVAP-Evaporator.
 X. Chen et al. / Energy 118 (2017) 1361e1369
Supplementary Materials. SR cycle was studied by Herold et al.,
which is beneficial for cases with large temperature glides inside
absorber and generator [21]. However, the performance decreases
at large temperature lifts. This can be shown in Fig. 6(a). Therefore,
the second feature is that a portion of strong solution is used to flow
through the rectifier as the cooling medium, in such way one un-
derlying concern is that the temperature of incoming strong solu-
tion must be cold sufficiently, accordingly, the separation of strong
solution is arranged at state 2 other than state 16. The split ratio x is
defined as the ratio of mass flow rate of strong solution flowing in
the rectifier to the total mass flow rate of strong solution.
The two branches mix at state 3, the feed condition at state 3 is
saturated feeding according to pinch technology, which would
yield an optimum COP [22, 24]. In the following analysis, three
temperatures T4, T10 and T14 as depicted in Fig. 1 are replaced by TH,
Tcond and Tevap for convenience. For carrying out simulations, the
following assumptions are made [9]:
1) The absorption ends temperature at state 1 is the same as
condensation temperature at state 10.
2) The solution is saturated liquid at state 1, 3, 4 and 10 and the
solution is saturated vapor at state13.
3) The mass fraction of ammonia at state 9 is set to be 0.998.
4) Steady-state operation, negligible pressure drop inside the tubes
and power consumed by the pump.
5) Minimum reflux ratio for the rectification process according to
McCabe-Thiele Method.
6) The system is perfectly insulated with the effectiveness of 0.9 for
the RHE.
7) Strong solution after preheating has the largest temperature in
the absorber.
2.1. Solution recirculation
If the heat source temperature is not sufficiently high to ensure
the GAX effect, the temperature glide inside absorber and generator
may be still high, leading to the temperature mismatch of SHE. The
temperature of weak solution leaving the generator is considerably
higher than the temperature of strong solution leaving the solution
heat exchanger. One approach to tackle with the problem of tem-
perature mismatch is solution recirculation. The hot weak solution
leaving the generator recirculates to generator for vapor generation
and the cold strong solution leaving the absorber flows back to
absorber for preheating. The heat from the weak solution is utilized
effectively in this way, and the improper heat match in solution
heat exchanger caused by temperature mismatch can be alleviated.
At the working condition such that TH ¼ 120
C, Tcond ¼ 35
C and
Tevap ¼ 0
Cthe cycle which uses the absorption heat for preheating
was shown to have 14% improvement in COP [25]. The performance
improvement of solution recirculation cycle εSR can be defined as
the percentage increase in COP compared with the traditional
single-effect cycle under the same TH.
εSR ðTH Þ ¼ ðCOPSR  COPT Þ=COPT  100% (1)
The subscripts SR and T stand for solution recirculation and
traditional single-effect cycle, respectively. The effectiveness of
solution heat exchangers is assumed to 1 for fair comparison.
However, solution recirculation is not very effective when tem-
perature lift is large, as the decreases in circulation ratio would be
compensated by the large temperature lifts. Lowering the evapo-
ration temperature, for example, would yield a deduction in
ammonia mass fraction of the strong solution while keeping others
variables invariant. The large temperature glides therefore are
1363
suppressed.
The internal heat recovery of rectification heat can be incorpo-
rated in solution recirculation cycle, not only the quantity but also
the quality of the rectification heat increases at large temperature
lifts. The effective use of rectification heat would boost the system
performance at large temperature lifts. As the heat capacity of
strong solution is limited, a better way of integration of the recti-
fication heat is to separate the strong solution instead of recovering
the rectification heat by the total solution. In the following analysis,
the split of the strong solution would be discussed in details.
2.2. Integration of rectification heat
Instead of using cooling water to remove the rectification load, a
portion of strong solution is used to flow through the rectifier as the
cooling medium. The split ratio exerts a significant influence on the
performance of improved cycle. It will both affect the heat ex-
change in the REC and SHE simultaneously. At the REC side, the
temperature at state 17 is always limited by the temperature at
state 3. Thus, the enthalpy at state 17 is calculated as follows:
h17 ¼ minðhb ; qrec =fx þ h2 Þ (2)
where hb is the enthalpy of saturated strong solution, qrec is the
rectification heat and f is the circulation ratio. Since the GAX effect
is not available, the absorber starting temperature is always less
than the generator starting temperature, i.e., no temperature
overlap between absorber and generator. This means that the
temperature of strong solution at state 16 is less than its bubble
temperature, which occurs at state 3. At the same time, one
important implication by inspecting Fig. 1 is that the enthalpy at
state 17 must be larger than that of state 16, otherwise there is no
point to take the advantage of rectification heat. Hence, there exists
an upper limiting value of split ratio such that h17 equals to h16,
which is defined as xrec
upper .
xrec
upper ¼ qrec =f ðh16  h2 Þ (3)
As for the SHE side, the split ratio affects the heat exchange
inside SHE. The decreasing in mass flow rate of strong solution will
affect the heat transfer coefficient, the heat capacity rate and
eventually the effectiveness of heat exchanger. For a given solution
heat exchanger, the effectiveness would go down as the split ratio
increases. At this point, it seems that it is meaningless to split the
strong solution. However, COP is the object function which should
be improved at an expense of larger solution heat exchanger. On the
other hand, if the size of solution heat exchanger is compared to the
one used in tradition cycle, it would not increase too much as the
heat load in solution heat exchanger decreases because of solution
recirculation. At the working condition like TH ¼ 150
C,
Tcond ¼ 30
C and Tevap ¼ 30
Cthe heat load in solution heat
exchanger decreases by 44%. For a conservative comparison about
the size of solution heat exchanger, the outlet of strong solution
leaving solution heat exchanger is assumed to be saturated liquid as
well with the effectiveness of 1. Taking the product of UA in
traditional single-effect cycle as the base case, it is convenient to
obtain the ratio of the product of UA to that of the base case. The
ratio of UAx/UAb at split ratio of 0 (SR cycle) is smaller than that in
the traditional cycle, which increases as split ratio increases, One
precaution must be taken into account is that the split ratio, defined
as xavoid, should not be taken at the occasion when the heat capacity
rates of two stream are equal, because the heat transfer surface
would be infinite large. This can be shown in Fig. S2 from Supple-
mentary Materials.
1364 X. Chen et al. / Energy 118 (2017) 1361e1369


xavoid ¼ 1  cp;w ðf  1Þ cp;s f (4)

Where cp,w and cp,s is the specific heat capacity of weak and
strong solution, respectively.
The maximum heat recovered from the weak solution not only
depends on the heat transfer area but also the split ratio. Typically,
the Log Mean temperature and NTU-ε method is not applicable as
the strong solution would undergo phase change inside SHE [26].
Alternatively, Yohanis et al. proposed a simple method that uses
enthalpies instead of temperatures which can be applied to analyze
the maximum heat flow in the heat exchanger with phase change
[27]. If the strong solution splits, the maximum possible amount of
heat can be expressed as follows:
    
q1 DTpinch ¼ ðf  1Þ h15  h T16 þ DTpinch ; Pcond ; εw (5)

     
q2 x; DTpinch ¼ f ð1  xÞ h T15  DTpinch ; Pcond ; εs  h16
Fig. 2. The variations of q1, q2, q3, qmax and qrequired with respect to split ratio at the
(6) working condition of TH ¼ 150
C, Tevap ¼ 30
C and Tcond ¼ 30
C.

    
q3 x; DTpinch ¼ ðf  1Þ h15  h Tb þ DTpinch ; Pcond ; εw
þ f ð1  xÞðhb  h16 Þ
The ammonia mass fraction for weak and strong solution is
denoted as εs and εw respectively. Tb and hb is the bubble temper-
ature of the strong solution and corresponding enthalpy. Pcond is the
condensation pressure. DTpinch is the minimum temperature dif-
ference inside the heat exchanger. Eq. (5) indicates the maximum
possible heat removed if the hot weak solution is cooled down to
T16 þ DTpinch, while Eq. (6) indicates that the maximum possible
heat recovered if cold strong solution is heated up to T15DTpinch.
Eq. (7) represents the maximum possible heat flow when pinch
point is created inside SHE. The first and second term in Eq. (7)
corresponds to the heat flow above and below the pinch point,
respectively. In the following analysis DTpinch is set to be 0
C, which
although would yield a heat exchanger with infinite heat transfer
area, it provides the insight on how much the theoretical
improvement can be achieved, especially at the preliminary design
stage. If this improvement is insignificant, then the improved cycle
should be discarded. Taking the three possible maximum heat
flows into account, the maximum amount of heat inside SHE as a
function of x can be expressed as follows with DTpinch ¼ 0:
bubble temperature. The two lines intercepts at a limit value of split
ratio, defined as xsheupper . The existence of envelop between these two
(7) lines exhibits that the maximum heat available is larger than the
required heat. Accordingly, the line of qmax can be shifted down-
wards to yield a higher COP as can be seen from Fig. 3. The
maximum allowable split ratio is either xshe rec
upper or xupper , whichever
is smaller, but it is observed that the maximum allowable split ratio
is always constrained by xshe upper .
 
xmax ¼ min xshe rec she
upper ; xupper ¼ xupper (10)
The optimum split ratio exists when the gap inside envelop is
largest, which happens to be a split ratio at which the rectification
heat is entirely extracted:
xopt ¼ qrec =f ðhb  h2 Þ (11)
In practical operation, the optimum split ratio maybe not
guaranteed, the selected split ratio may deviate around the opti-
mum one, for instance, point A and B shown in Fig. 3 deliveries the
same enhanced performance. But split ratio at A and B would
generate totally different system configurations. The rectification

qmax ðxÞ ¼ minðq1 ðx; 0Þ; q2 ðx; 0Þ; q3 ðx; 0ÞÞ (8)
On the other hand, the outlet of cold strong solution must be
heated up at least to its bubble temperature as discussed previ-
ously, the required amount of heat extracted from SHE is then:

qrequired ðxÞ ¼ f ð1  xÞðhb  h16 Þ þ fxðhb  h17 Þ (9)

When split ratio takes at 0, the improved cycle would be

changed to SR cycle and the total cold strong solution then passed
through SHE, which underlies a possible highest value of T15. By
letting Eq. (8) and Eq. (9) equal, T15 can be determined. Such value
of T15 is used in the subsequent analysis when the strong solution
splits so as to show the effect of T15 on qmax.
Fig. 2 shows the variations of q1, q2, q3, qmax and qrequired with
respect to split ratio. The dotted green line is q1 that is independent
on split ratio, the dashed red line is q2 that is the most sensitive to
split ratio, which decreases as split ratio increases, the dashed and
dotted blue line is q3. The thick solid line qmax represents the
maximum heat flow and the thin solid line qrequired represents the Fig. 3. The variations of qmax and qrequired with respect to split ratio and TH at the
required amount heat for heating up the strong solution to its working condition of Tevap ¼ 30
C and Tcond ¼ 30
C.
 X. Chen et al. / Energy 118 (2017) 1361e1369
heat at point A is not totally extracted, thus, the remaining heat
would be released by passing through cooling water. This could
make the rectifier very complex, more importantly, the conse-
quence maybe even worse if the cooling water imposes negative
effects on the rectification heat recovery. Nevertheless at point B,
the cooling water is no longer required, the payback is the need of a
relatively larger solution heat exchanger due to the creation of
pinch point. Comparing with the two cases, point B is preferred.
Consequently, the range of split ratio that can be selected is:


x3 xopt ; xmax (12)
Essentially, the heat input subtracted in the generator does not
equal to the rectification heat extracted. This is because that a
portion of strong solution would be preheated in the absorber if
there is no separation. Under the assumption that the heat capacity
of strong solution is approximately constant and the temperature of
strong solution flow through the pump is approximately the same,
i.e. T1y T2, the heat input subtracted at split ratio of xopt is derived
as follow:
Dqinput ¼ qrec ðhb  h16 Þ=ðhb  h2 Þyqrec ðT3  T16 Þ=ðT3  T1 Þ
 qrec
(13)
Eq. (13) reveals that the extracted rectification heat cannot be
used up in the generator. The utilization of rectification heat is more
effective if h16 is smaller, which actually occurs when the effect of
SR is not obvious. On the contrary, the recovery of rectification heat
in GAX cycle is meaningless because of very high value of h16. In
order to demonstrate this, for cycle operated under TH ¼ 140
C,
Tevap ¼ 18
C and Tcond ¼ 32
C, the thermodynamic cycle is shown
in Fig. 4, the difference between (T3 and T16) and (T3 and T2) is
represented as line segment of a and b, respectively. While keeping
other variables fixed, TH is decreased to 125
C. It should be noted
that only the ammonia mass fraction of weak solution changes
from previous 0.19 to 0.25, illustrating as dashed line that is con-
nected from point 40 to 160 . As the line segment of a increases,
referring to Eq. (13), the heat input decreases, which means that the
improved cycle can compensate the system performance when SR
effect is degraded.
The thermal COP (with the neglect of electric power consumed
by pump) is derived as:
Fig. 4. Pressure-Temperature diagram.
1365
COPSRS ¼ ðh13  h12 Þ=½h9 þ ðf  1Þh15  fhb


þ qrec ; x3 xopt ; xmax (14)
The performance improvement of the improved cycle εSRS is
defined as the percentage difference of COP between the improved
cycle operated at xopt and the traditional single-effect cycle under
the same TH.


εSRS ðTH Þ ¼ COPSRS xopt  COPT COPT  100% (15)
where the subscript SRS stands for ‘Solution Recirculation with
Split’.
In Eq. (14), only h15 varies with x, the determination of h15 in-
volves with equaling Eq. (8) and Eq. (9). Additionally, the value of
xopt is no larger than that of xmax. The thermodynamic modeling of
the improved cycle is implemented on EES with the applying of
conservation of mass, ammonia concentration and energy. Heat
balance is checked as well to ensure that there is no error associated
with the simulation process. A GUI interface is built to compare
thermal performance of interest cycles such as GAX, single-effect,
SR and the improved cycle by giving the working conditions,
which can be found in Fig. S3 from Supplementary Materials.
The variation of COP with split ratio is plotted in Fig. 5, COP is a
peak value at xopt as expected and remains unchanged as that of SR
cycle when split ratio takes either 0 or xmax. The difference between
xmax and xopt however varies with working conditions. A large
difference suggests that there is sufficient room for the selection of
split ratios while a small difference exhibits that the system per-
formance is very sensitive to the split ratio and a small deviation at
optimum split ratio would degrade the system performance. In
such scenario, the improved cycle is not recommended. A further
study on sensitivity of the improved cycle in terms of split ratio
would be conducted in the feasibility study.
It is necessary to obtain a direct comparison between the
improved and SR cycle with knowing the splitting mechanism
behind the improved cycle. The effect of condensation and evapo-
ration temperature is lumped on a single graph named as
TcondTevap plane, illustrated in Fig. 6, which is divided into several
regions with 2% increment of improvement in COP formed by the
adjacent solid lines. The effect of GAX is available in the region
Fig. 5. COP of improved cycle varies with split ratio at the working condition of
TH ¼ 150
C, Tevap ¼ 30
C Tcond ¼ 30
C and DTpinch ¼ 0
C.
1366 X. Chen et al. / Energy 118 (2017) 1361e1369

3. Feasibility analysis

The performance of the improved cycle depends on both in-

ternal and external factors. The design of heat exchangers can be
regarded as internal factors and a well-designed heat exchanger
can ensure the effective heat transfer. While the temperature levels
TH, Tcond and Tevap account for the external factors. A further
investigation on the effect of the temperature levels can show the
feasibility of the improved cycle. From Fig. 7(a), the recommended
range of split ratio diminishes with the increasing of TH and the
dashed line of xavoid is also included as reference. Fig. 7(b) dictates
that improved cycle can be operated at a relatively lower heat
source temperature without sacrificing any performance and the
improved cycle is less sensitive to TH, while the SR cycle is less
effective as TH goes down. The combination of Figs. 6 and 7 dem-
onstrates the improved cycle should be considered at lower heat
source temperature.
Apart from the effect of TH, Figs. 8 and 9 show the effect of Tevap
and Tcond on split ratio and improvement, respectively. The
improvement of the improved cycle goes up as temperature lifts
increases whereas the improvement of SR cycle behaves an oppo-
site trend as shown in Figs. 8(b) and 9(b). It is clearly illustrated that
the advantage of integration of rectification heat at larger tem-
perature lifts. From Figs. 8(a) and 9(a), for the operations nearby
GAX effect, the improved cycle is very sensitive to split ratio and the
performance is not noticeable compared to SR cycle. Hence, the
utilization of rectification heat under these circumstances should
be rejected because of difficult implementation of the system. The
improved cycle is considered only if the improvement is at least 5%

Fig. 6. The contours of improvement in (a) SR cycle and (b) improved cycle in
TevapTcond plane under TH ¼ 150
C.

above the dashed line, while half effect cycle is recommended in

the region below the dotted line for very large temperature lifts
applications [28]. The determination of minimum temperature
required is based on the zero-order model with the 10
C heat
transfer driving potential [21]. The improved cycle demonstrates a
better performance than SR cycle especially at large temperature
lifts by comparing Fig. 6a and b.
The above calculations are based on the assumption of DTpinch is
0, the improvements calculated are considerably large which im-
plies that the using of the improved cycle can effectively boost
thermal performance and provides the amount of theoretical
improvement that can be achieved. For a realistic situation, the
improvement obviously decreases with the increasing of DTpinch,
the enhancement, however, is still significant due to the proper
temperature match inside the SHE. The improvement can be as
high as at least 16% under certain working condition. It can be seen
in Fig. S4 from Supplementary Materials. Additionally, the oper-
ating condition can be found in Table S1 from Supplementary
Fig. 7. The effect of TH on (a) split ratio and (b) improvements at Tevap ¼ 18
C and
Materials. Tcond ¼ 32
C.
 X. Chen et al. / Energy 118 (2017) 1361e1369 1367

Fig. 9. The effect of Tcond on (a) split ratio and (b) improvements at TH ¼ 150
C and
Fig. 8. The effect of Tevap on (a) split ratio and (b) improvements at TH ¼ 150
C and Tevap ¼ 30
C.
Tcond ¼ 30
C.

higher than that of SR cycle.

Generally, Fig. 10 provides a graphic aid to selecting the appro-
priate cycle with invariant of Tcond. The logic of constructing this
graph is shown in a flowchart, which can be found in Fig. S5 from
Supplementary Materials. The flowchart establishes criteria of
selecting suitable cycle. The SR cycle is only represented in a narrow
region, therefore, for most operations the traditional single-effect
cycle can be replaced by the improved cycle.

4. Case studies

In the improved cycle, the solution recirculation is always

accompanied with the rectification heat recovery. In the following
case studies, the integration of rectification heat without solution
recirculation and with only the weak solution recirculation is dis-
cussed in case study I and II, respectively. The motivation on the
study of the two cases is to investigate how the effect of solution
recirculation and rectification heat recovery affects the perfor-
Fig. 10. Different cycles used under different working conditions under Tcond ¼ 30
C.
mance of improved cycle. The schematics of the two corresponding
cycles are shown in Fig. 11.
improved cycle, cycles in case study I and II, SR cycle and traditional
4.1. Case study I: Rectification heat recovery only cycle, it can be shown that the improved cycle combined with the
two enhancements takes the advantages of both features, if SR ef-
A similar analysis can be conducted to obtain the COP for case fect is not obvious at large temperature lifts, the recovery of recti-
study I. In contrast to the improved cycle, the differences consist of fication heat can enhance performance. The purpose of applying
the strong solution at feed stage is two phases and the rectification the improved cycle is also verified in accordance with the previous
load is quite sensitive to the split ratio. The size of SHE is larger predications. Another observation from Fig. 12 is that the perfor-
whereas the size of absorber is smaller. In Fig. 12, the relation be- mance of cycle in case study I is approximately the same as that of
tween COPs and evaporation temperature are obtained for the improved cycle when the temperature lift becomes larger, in
1368 X. Chen et al. / Energy 118 (2017) 1361e1369
Fig. 11. Case studies on the cycle of: (I) rectification heat recovery only (II) rectification heat recovery with weak solution recirculation only.
Fig. 12. COP for the improved cycle, case study cycle I/II, SR cycle and traditional cycle
at TH ¼ 130
C and Tcond ¼ 30
C.
this sense, the solution recirculation can be neglected without
sacrificing any performance, as the implementation of solution
recirculation might increase the system complexity and cause dif-
ficulties in conducting experiments.
4.2. Case study II: Rectification heat recovery with weak solution
recirculation
If the strong solution recirculation is neglected as shown in cycle
in case study II, the improvement in performance is solely achieved
by the effect of rectification heat recovery, as it can be seen from
Fig. 12, the COP obtained for case study I and II is nearly the same,
which may due to that the temperature mismatch inside the SHE
still exists. Although the effect of weak solution recirculation only
doesn't show any enhancement, the size of solution heat exchanger
is smaller due to smaller heat load and the rectification heat is
insensitive to the split ratio.
5. Conclusion
The proposed cycle should be considered when the water-
ammonia absorption refrigerator is operated either under large
temperature lifts or low heat source temperature if GAX effect or
half effect is not suitable. The commonly used single-effect cycle
can be replaced by the improved cycle as long as the split ratio
chosen lies in the recommended range from xopt to xmax. The dif-
ference between them serves as an indicator whether or not
applying such improved cycle.
The improved cycle shows 24% increase in COP compared with
traditional cycle at working condition like TH ¼ 150
C,
Tevap ¼ 30
C and Tcond ¼ 30
C.The improved cycle takes advan-
tages of solution recirculation and rectification heat recovery, the
effect of SR is obvious at small temperature lifts whereas the effect
of rectification heat recovery is dominant at large temperature lifts,
and the solution recirculation can be eliminated to decrease the
complexity of the cycle without scarifying any performance. As a
matter of fact, the two features combined to achieve a better per-
formance. If the improved cycle operated nearby GAX effect, for
instance, is not recommended due to difficult selection of split
ratio.
Appendix A. Supplementary data
Supplementary data related to this article can be found at http://
dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2016.11.014.
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