In order to investigate the effects of various parameters on the adsorption chiller performance, the adsorbent bed must be modeled with the appropriate governing equations and assumptions. One of the assumptions, which greatly influences the modeling complexity and computational cost is the bed uniform pressure assumption, which relaxes the need for solving the momentum equations governing the motion of the refrigerant vapor through the porous bed. However, in some bed conditions the bed pressure distribution should be calculated and the inter-particle resistance cannot be neglected, which in turn requires the determination of the bed velocity field. It is of great practical importance to know in advance, whether the uniform pressure approach is appropriate for the modeling of the problem in hand. In this study, a dimensionless parameter based on the scale up analysis of the governing equations is introduced, which can be calculated based on the input data of the problem to decide about the appropriate bed pressure assumption prior to start the modeling process.

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