Review of Recent Patents on Chemical Heat Pump

The concerns of energy consumption and environmental pollution urge researchers to work on the development of clean energy and the utilization of waste energy. Sorts of novel technologies were developed and the achievements were patented. Among these patents, chemical heat pump system, is one important topic. It utilizes the transformation between potential energy and thermal power energy to realize the performance of heat pumping and refrigeration. The thermal-potential tansformation reversible reaction in chemical heat pump mainly includes liquid-gas absorption, solid-gas reaction and solid adsorption. According to the characteristic of transformation reaction, chemical heat pump is classified into mono-variant system and di-variant system. The mono-variant system includes solid-gas reaction system and liquid-gas reaction system, etc, the di-variant system is also known as solid adsorption system. In this paper, novel technology on chemical heat pump system and its components was surveyed and typical patents were introduced. With the achievements disclosed in these critical patents, the performance of chemical heat pump could be significantly improved.