Numerical Investigation of Copper Foam Adsorption Beds Packed with MOF-801 for Space Cooling and Desalination Applications

In this paper, an emerging Metal Organic Framework adsorbent MOF-801 packed into a recently developed copper foamed adsorbent-bed is numerically investigated under different operating conditions and physical parameters and benchmarked against the widely used silica gel adsorbent. A numerical model using lumped dynamic modelling approach was developed and validated against experimental data. An enhancement in the effective thermal conductivity for MOF-801 and silica gel foam packed bed and hence an improvement for the overall performance. The MOF-801-based system showed a higher performance for desalination application with a maximum production of specific daily water production of 13 m3/ton·day compared to 9 m3/ton·day for the silica gel-based system. MOF-801-based system evidenced its competition in the cooling application, achieving enhancement for the specific cooling power 140% higher than silica gel-based system.