Experimental study on solar chemical heat pump system: Dehydrogenation of 2-propanol and rectification process

It is difficult to get high-temperature thermal energy continuously from the sun under a poor insolation such as in Japan. However, It is easy to get low-temperature thermal energy. Hence the authors use a chemical heat pump in order to upgrade low-temperature thermal energy obtained from the sun. The authors adopted 2-propanol/acetone/hydrogen system as the chemical reaction. In this reaction, the authors experimented the dehydrogenation-reaction of 2-propanol and the separation of acetone from 2-propanol with a rectification method. Experiments were conducted under various conditions of reaction and rectification heating quantity, heating temperature, rotating speed of stirrer, and reflux ratio. In this paper, the authors report the detailed results obtained from the experiments.