iocase

Absorption coolers use heat to regenerate their refrigerant. Two common types are a water vapour-LiBr chiller, and an ammonia-water chiller (in fact Einstein patented a mini bar chiller design still used today that has no moving parts, using just helium or hydrogen and gas absorption/evaporation to move refrigerating gasses around)

Single effect chillers have a low Coefficient of Performance (CoP) roughly around 0.4-0.6, meaning for every watt of heat you apply to a single effect chillers, you move 0.4-0.6W of heat, but they only need a minimum of 90⁰C in heat to power them.

Double effect chillers can reach 0.9-1.2 CoP.

Flue gasses are typically hotter than 90⁰C, so you'll often see absorbers part of combined heat and power systems. Cooling in the summer, heating in the winter. All using waste heat from power generation.

What I find the most fascinating about them is they work using heat. The only power you need to apply is for a few pumps to move fluids around at low pressures, otherwise the primary refrigeration energy comes from heat regenerating the refrigerant.

I've often wondered what a district cooling system using these would get for efficiency if you colocated it with something energy hungry like a cement kiln or glass kiln.

Video of how a double effect chillers works

District cooling video

Edit: these are used already for district cooling, just usually for a campus like a university or government complex. The big benefit is you can run them on marginal heat sources, even off of low grade geothermal.

Just wanted to share my recent discovery. Dexter doesn't seem to mind either!

He's always been a quiet purrer. I call it his "silent running" purrs. Usually I press my ear right against his chest to listen (he loves this) but headphones amplify it massively.

The US economy has reached a point of no return. It looks like Trump is trying to dismantle the Fed's independance so he can better loot the treasury...

Apologies if this has been asked to death already and i haven't seen it. I'm also not trying to be too much of a downer but it's kind of unprecedented.

I'm wondering what you think it'll do to you personally? I think we're just getting started and haven't experienced the full shock yet. Inventories are still being burned down and even if the strait opened tomorrow no oil would flow for 8 months since you need to demine it and line up passages of tankers.

My biggest worry is over fertillizer. The strait closed right at planting season for the northern hemisphere stranding like ⅓ of the world's ammonium nitrate. Farmers in rich nations buy it in advance and have it staged for spring, so I'm unsure how the rest of the world does it or how bad that's going to be...