Completed project: Heat utilisation with solid sorption technology
The THRIVE joint project studied and developed adsorption heat pump technology to harness waste heat and renewable heat in Switzerland to substitute electricity and fossil fuels.
Thermally driven adsorption heat pumps represent a promising technology to utilise abundant waste heat or renewable heat to provide heating and cooling at optimal temperatures with high exergetic efficiency. Savings in both electricity consumption as well as carbon emissions related to heating and cooling are substantial compared to conventional heating and cooling technologies.
As part of the NRP 70 joint project headed up by Dr Bruno Michel from IBM Research GmbH and Dr Elimar Frank from the University of Applied Sciences Rapperswil (HSR), five sub-projects highlighted various aspects of this technology.
Key results of the individual sub-projects were the development and demonstration of higher performance adsorbent materials, materials shaping methods for the preparation and integration of high-performance adsorbent coatings with heat exchangers, novel experimental characterisation tools and infrastructure for adsorption heat pump research from the scale of <1 W to approx. 10 kW cooling power, and a framework for sustainability and cost assessment for adsorption heat pumps across their life cycle.