A RESEARCH ON "WARMICE" COOL STORAGE TECHNOLOGY

"Warm ice " was first named in literature in 1990, to denote those clathrate hydrates formed by refrigerants for cool storage applications. A large variety of refrigerants can initiate water to from "warm ice" in range of 5-17℃ with large formation heat (320-430kJ/kg). Recently , the“warm ice ”cool storage technology has progressed due to the breakthrough in appropriate hydrate formers and efficient hydrate formation processes. One of the major progress in this new technology is the use of blends of refrigerants ,which are environmental friendly, and some additives to form mixed hydrates which have better thermodynamic and hydrate-formation properties and low inventory of refrigerant. The other progress is the development of high efficient " warm ice" storage facilities. In this paper, the experimental results for the phase-equilibrium and hydrate-formation properties of several warm ices formed by blends of new refrigerants and an innovative high-efficient "warm ice" (clathrate hydrate) storage equipment are reported. The experiments on the performance of the developed storage facility are presented and the test results are discussed. For application of the new "warm ice" storage system in the practical air conditioning engineering, we have proposed a serial partial-load cool storage arrangement with the chiller located downstream. It is shown that the proposed application mode can meet the engineering requirements for air conditioning standards and is more economic comparing with ordinary ice-storage sir conditioning system,