Alloy selections in high-temperature metal hydride heat pump systems for industrial waste heat recovery
Y.T. Ge, P.Y. Lang
Abstract
In an energy intensive industrial site such as a steel plant, there are plenty of medium and low temperature waste heat which could be recovered for heating purposes with advanced and feasible technologies for example metal hydride (MH) heat pumps. Compared to other heat pump systems such as those with compression and absorption cycles, the MH heat pump has some distinctive advantages including low carbon system in terms of less electricity input and environmentally friendly working mediums, compactness, and most importantly achievable heat output with relatively high temperature. However, the applicable alloys for the high-temperature MH heat pump systems are critical and need to be purposely selected. Accordingly, in this paper, a comprehensive procedure to select alloys for the high-temperature MH heat pump systems is explained based on the operating temperatures, system efficiencies and thermodynamic equilibriums. From the database of literatures, totally 82 alloys are potentially used for this special application of which 1560 alloy pairs are formed and each pair consists of one high-temperature alloy and another low-temperature alloy. Subsequently, a number of applicable alloys are selected for each designed temperature of heat pump output and one pair is ultimately finalised. The alloy can be further examined considering of its thermophysical properties, heat transfer behaviours, costs and safety issues.