Session: 19-02: Symposium to Honor Professor Jane Davidson II

Paper Number: 169488

169488 - (Invited)The Thermally Driven Heat Pump: A Most Versatile Tool to Decarbonize at Scale 

Abstract: 

Global climate change and burgeoning worldwide energy demand are driving a transition toward electrification in the energy utilization sector. In the push toward decarbonization, electrification alone may not yield immediate reductions in carbon emissions because fossil-free renewable options are still in the ramp up phase.  Innovations in heat driven cycles provide a suite of options to complement renewable electricity and progress toward this goal.  The role of sorption in space-conditioning through innovative heat and mass transfer processes driven by renewable energy sources or waste heat will be presented.  Waste heat driven sorption heat pumps to provide cooling in severe ambient conditions will be shown to reduce the carbon footprint at kW to MW scales.  Application of adsorption-based thermal storage and heating pumping to enhance the performance of commercial dryers will be discussed.  A combination of adsorption and absorption systems for the development of diurnal and seasonal thermal storage systems will be discussed.  Likewise, thermochemical adsorption-based thermal storage to augment the performance of vapor compression heat pumps and better utilize intermittent renewable energy or address varying electricity costs will be discussed. Adsorption chillers driven by biomass, solar or waste heat for use in the cold chain to reduce food spoilage in developing countries with uncertain electricity infrastructure will also be presented.  Other applications include novel multi-purpose systems that achieve simultaneous space-conditioning and water purification at the distributed residential scale using absorption heat pumps.  Further extensions inspired by thermal wave heat pump technology to exploit fast heat and mass transfer kinetics in hollow sorbent loaded microchannel fibers to enable rapid temperature swing adsorption (RTSA) for CO₂ capture from power plants will also be discussed.  These representative applications demonstrate the continued vast potential for innovations in heat driven cycles for a wide range of essential human needs such as food and water, clothing, shelter, and the environment.

Presenting Author: Srinivas Garimella Georgia Institute of Technology

Presenting Author Biography: Dr. Srinivas Garimella is the Hightower Chair in Engineering and Director of the Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the ASME and of ASHRAE. He is Editor of the Int. J. Air-conditioning and Refrigeration, and past Associate Editor of the ASME J. Heat Transfer and ASME J Energy Resources Technology, and of the ASHRAE SBTE Journal. He is Past Chair of the Advanced Energy Systems Division of ASME and was on the ASHRAE Research Administration Committee. He has mentored over 75 postdoctoral researchers, research engineers and students pursuing their M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, with his research resulting in over 375 archival journal and conference publications, a textbook on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Minichannels and Microchannels (2nd Ed., Elsevier 2014), and books on Condensation Heat Transfer (World Scientific Publishing, 2015) and Adsorption Heat Pumps (Springer Nature, 2021.) He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (1999), the ASHRAE New Investigator Award (1998), the SAE Ralph E. Teetor Educational Award for Engineering Educators (1998). He received the ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award (2024) and the Georg Alefeld award (2024) for outstanding and lifelong contributions to the field of sorption chillers and heat pumps. He also received the ASME Award for Outstanding Research Contributions in the Field of Two-Phase Flow and Condensation in Microchannels (2012) and the Prominent Researcher Award at the Micro Flow and Interfacial Phenomena Conference 2022 for sustained and outstanding contributions to the fundamentals of phase change heat transfer at mini‐ and micro‐scales and coupled heat and mass transfer in binary fluids. He was recognized with the Thomas French Distinguished Educator Achievement Award (2008) from The Ohio State University, and the Zeigler Outstanding Educator Award (2012) and the Sigma Xi Sustained Research Award (2023) from Georgia Tech.