Abstract

Sorption heat storage and upgrade is one of the promising methods to balance the time and place mismatch between heat supply and demands because of its high energy storage density, simple structure and little heat loss during the charging process. However, it is difficult to meet the output temperature requirements based on the common working pressure couple of sorption working pairs for severe environmental temperature. Compression-assisted sorption heat transformer (CSHT) cycle is conceived to solve the problems of the temperature glides in industrial heating application. Some research gaps still exist, especially for thermal cycle of using working pairs. This work aims to comprehensively analyze the thermal performance of CSHT using selecting and comparing various working pairs. Results indicate that MnCl<inf>2</inf>-SrCl<inf>2</inf> is the optimal choice. CSHT using MnCl<inf>2</inf>-SrCl<inf>2</inf> could achieve a temperature rise of 70 °C while consuming only 14.3 % of the cycle heat release as compression work. MnCl<inf>2</inf>-NaI and MnCl<inf>2</inf>-CaCl<inf>2</inf>(4–8) are also preferred for high temperature output. The performance is also compared with absorption thermal battery, which is a bit advantageous in heat source temperature below 100 °C. It reveals that CSHT could explore more potential in future industrial heat recovery.