Ammonia-carbon adsorption cycle refrigerators, heat pumps and thermal transformers.

Active carbon-ammonia cycles have been developed from the 1980’s in the USA and are still a major research interest at the University of Warwick, where systems have been built for car air conditioning, solar refrigeration and gas-fired heat pumps. The basic cycles are introduced and a brief description of the historical development is presented. The paper then presents past projects on air conditioning and cooling and work to date on domestic gas fired heat pumps with preliminary results from the latest system under test, and describes plans and the prospects for future products. The possibility of using carbon-ammonia in thermal transformers for industrial use is modelled theoretically and the prospects discussed and compared with using ammonia and chemical salts.