Adsorption desalination-cooling system employing copper sulfate driven by low grade heat sources

In this study benefits of employing copper sulfate salt hydrate with water vapor as a new adsorption pair in thermally driven adsorption desalination-cooling systems (ADCSs) have been investigated. Adsorption characteristics (isotherm and kinetic) of copper sulfate/water vapor pair have been presented in this study within temperature range of 25–55 °C. Sun-Chakraborty (S-C) and Dubinin-Astakhov (D-A) models have been used for fitting isotherms results, while linear driving force (LDF) model has been used for the kinetics results. Experimental adsorption capacity of water vapor onto copper sulfate is found to be around 0.51 kg/kg at 25 °C. Activation energy (E_a) and the pre-exponential coefficient (D_so) are estimated to be 25.053 kJ/mol and 1.89 × 10⁻⁷ m²/s respectively. A theoretical model for an ADCS has been investigated employing copper sulfate as adsorbent material. The proposed system can produce specific daily water production about 8.2 m³ per ton of copper sulfate, 227 W/kg of copper sulfate specific cooling power and 0.57 coefficient of performance. The performance of the modeled system indicates that the proposed system can be driven efficiently by renewable energy such as solar energy.