Pressure-drop and energy-saving analysisof TBAB clathrate hydrate slurry as a latent heat transportation media

The Clathrate Hydrate Slurry (CHS) of Tetra-n-Butyl-Ammonium Bromide (TBAB) comes into being under normal atmosphere when aqueous TBAB solution is cooled to 5-12 . It is a kind of high-density latent-heattransportation medium. CHS of TBAB has far higher cold-loading density than that water does, and can be transported easily through pipeline. So it can save the circulating pump power, and isvery promising to apply TBAB CHS into central air-conditioning or district coolingsystems as a new secondary refrigerant. In this paper, the pipe flow experiments of TBAB CHS are carried out. And the rheology and pressure-drop properties are investigated. It is found TBAB CHS complies with power law and behaves as non-Newtonian fluid. Based on a prototype of central air-conditioning system utilizing CHS as secondary refrigerant, a detailed circulating power consumption of secondary refrigerant was contrasted between CHS and traditional water. The results show that the CHS one could reduce the secondary refrigerant circulating power consumption to 27.4% of traditional water dose.