Multi-objective optimisation of MOF-801 adsorbent packed into copper foamed bed for cooling and water desalination systems

Recently, there have been several endeavours to enhance the performance of the adsorption systems for cooling cum desalination by developing new materials and adsorbent bed designs. Therefore, this article contributes to the field by computationally studying the utilisation of state-of-the-art MOF-801 adsorbent packed into the emerging copper-foamed adsorbent bed heat exchanger and benchmarking its performance against that utilising silica gel baseline adsorbent. A multi-objective global optimisation aimed simultaneously at the best coefficient of performance, specific cooling power, and clean water productivity was undertaken. The optimisation was built on the insights from a broad parametric study for the geometric and operating conditions. Given the novelty of
the adsorbent MOF-801 and bed design combination, a one-dimensional model was developed to imitate the heat transfer in the adsorbent bed and coupled with a previously validated empirical lumped analytical model for the adsorption system using the MATLAB platform. Using copper foam significantly enhanced the effective thermal performance of the adsorbent bed, improving the overall system performance under different operating conditions. Furthermore, the clean water productivity of the MOF-801-based system outperformed that of the SG-based system by 38%, as the former yielded 29.7 m3/(ton.day), while the latter 21.5 m3/(ton.day). Besides, the MOF-801-based system showed specific cooling power of 830.8 W/kg compared to 611.5 W/kg for the silica gel-based system. However, the cooling capacity per unit volume determined the systems’ form factor, and the coefficient of performance was respectively higher by 9.6% and 20.2% for the silica gel-based system than those of the MOF-801-based system, stemming from the low packing density of MOF-801.