Experimental and computational study on utilising graphene oxide for adsorption cooling and water desalination

The adsorbent material’s thermal and sorption characteristics are the critical criteria that affect the adsorption systems’ overall performance. Therefore, this paper experimentally and computationally studies the utilisation of graphene oxide of a few atomic layers as a parent adsorbent material owing to its reported high thermal performance potential. Graphene oxide performance was benchmarked against the widely investigated silica gel adsorbent, emphasising adsorption cooling cum desalination application as the most needed to address the lack of sustainable cooling and clean water scarcity. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were undertaken to determine the influence of the evaporator temperature, cycle time and heat source temperature on the material and system levels. The results showed that graphene oxide enhances thermal performance by 44% compared to silica gel and adsorption by up to 57%. Furthermore, graphene oxide, compared to silica gel as a parent adsorbent, enhanced the system’s specific daily water production by up to 44.4%, the specific cooling power by up to 29.5%, the coefficient of performance by up to 17.2% and the exergy efficiency by up to 15.8%.