Objective
Ionic liquids (IL) have been recently proposed as absorbents in absorption and refrigeration cycles (Cai, 2007). On the other hand, also recently a great attention has been redirected toward recovery of waste heat looking for working pairs with natural refrigerants that can be characterized by a well-balanced set of properties (Sen and Paolucci, 2006; Sen et al. 2007;…).
As a new type of fluids with a great hygroscopic character and other interesting properties such as a good thermal stability and very low vapour pressure, LIs can be excellent candidates as absorbents for absorption systems. As a drawback, the IL are highly viscous, specially at low temperature, restricting the flow of the absorbent in the machine. Nevertheless, addition of a molecular solvent reduces dramatically the viscosity. As a consequence an adequate design of a mixture LI + molecular solvent can lead to more efficient cycles.
A major focus of the network will be the study and development of new absorption refrigeration machines that can use solar/waste heat and overcome the limitations of the currently used water/lithium bromide and ammonia/water absorption machines.
NARILAR will consist of 2 university research groups from 2 European member countries and a Higher Education Institute and a research Laboratory from India as a country with which EU has and S&T Agreement. Research will be carried out in chemistry, physical chemistry and thermal and mechanical engineering.
The strategic goals of the project are to:
• Study the different ionic liquid-refrigerant pairs.
• Measure the properties of promising IL mixtures.
• Study the heat and mass transfer aspects of IL mixtures.
• Build and test some prototype absorption refrigeration machines with IL mixtures, for use with solar/waste heat.
The project implementation activities will be carried out at all the four locations of the project investigators, with work on refrigerators to be carried out at Tarragona and Chennai.
Fields of science
Call for proposal
FP7-PEOPLE-2010-IRSES
See other projects for this call
Coordinator
43003 Tarragona
Spain