Studies of the water adsorption on Lampung's natural zeolite of Indonesia for cooling application

Part of minerals that originally formed from volcanic rock and ash layers reacting further with alkaline groundwater is called natural zeolite, where its sources are not always available in all countries. Indonesia is located in the ring of fire which have a huge sources of zeolite, one of the area is Lampung, South Sumatra. Natural zeolite has been considered as one of potential heat adsorbent medium which can contribute to the energy consumption and reduce air pollution in the using of cooling application. The characteristic of this Lampung natural zeolite such as adsorption kinetics, adsorption water uptake, and adsorption capacity were test with ASAP 2020 system. Sorption kinetics by this experiment of zeolite samples were carried out in a constant temperature and humidity chamber. The chamber can supply constant air condition with deviations of ±0.5 °C for temperature and ±3% for relative humidity. The data based on rate of adsorption and the defined working condition was set as 20°C and 70% RH. Pore volume is a significant parameter for determining the limitation of water uptake, which can describe the saturated condition of zeolite. Sorption isotherm models used to describe sorption phenomena are commonly deduced from the Polanyi potential theory were investigated. The water adsorption quantity increased with the increase of relative pressure. To sum up, this pure zeolite has a less heat and mass transfer performance so its need to be activated before using in cooling application to get their great potential and by being coated in a desiccant heat exchanger systems.