Review of the potential and challenges of MOF-based adsorption heat pumps for sustainable cooling and heating in the buildings

Jubair A. Shamim; Kashif Nawaz; Ming Hsuan Hu; Paris Pasqualin; Easwaran N. Krishnan; Stephen P. Kowalski; Palash Kumar Bhowmik; Rajagopalan Parameshwaran; Wei Lun Hsu; Yunho Hwang; Hirofumi Daiguji

doi:10.1016/j.energy.2025.135846

Review of the potential and challenges of MOF-based adsorption heat pumps for sustainable cooling and heating in the buildings

Jubair A. Shamim, Kashif Nawaz, Ming Hsuan Hu, Paris Pasqualin, Easwaran N. Krishnan, Stephen P. Kowalski, Palash Kumar Bhowmik, Rajagopalan Parameshwaran, Wei Lun Hsu, Yunho Hwang, Hirofumi Daiguji

Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review

7 Scopus citations

Abstract

Heat pumps are regarded as the most suitable means to meet the future demand of heating and cooling in the building, as they require small input of electrical energy and output high thermal energy. Vapor compression heat pump (VCHP) and transcritical-CO₂ heat pump are the two major heat pump technologies currently dominating the market. However, VCHP system suffers from its fugitive emission of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants, and transcritical-CO₂ system requires high operating pressure (typically 9–13 MPa). For low-to-medium temperature heating and cooling applications thermally driven adsorption heat pump (AHP) provides a better alternative to VCHP and transcritical-CO₂ system as AHP uses natural refrigerants and operates at a much lower pressure. But currently available AHP technology has the limitation of low coefficient of performance (COP). Advances in synthesizing metal-organic frameworks (MOF) with high gas adsorption capacity have created an opportunity to address the problem of low COP of current AHP technology. This article reviews the progress made in the past decade in utilizing MOF and conventional adsorbents with different working fluids in AHP technology and compares their performance. The article also summarizes the key challenges for the MOF-based AHP technology and provides the authors’ perspective to address these challenges.

Original language	English
Article number	135846
Journal	Energy
Volume	323
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.energy.2025.135846
State	Published - May 15 2025

Funding

The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests:Kashif Nawaz reports financial support was provided by Building Technologies Office. If there are other authors, they declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.This work was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Building Technologies Office (BTO) and the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center (BTRIC), Oak Ridge National Laboratory. H.D. gratefully acknowledges funding support from Japan Science and Technology Agency CREST Grant Number JPMJCR17I3, and Daikin Industry Inc. The authors also gratefully acknowledge Poorandokht Ilani-Kashkouli from the Multifunctional Equipment Integration Group, Building and Transportation Science Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory for internally reviewing the manuscript. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan (http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan). This work was supported by the US Department of Energy (DOE) Building Technologies Office (BTO) and the Building Technologies Research and Integration Center (BTRIC), Oak Ridge National Laboratory. H.D. gratefully acknowledges funding support from Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) CREST Grant Number JPMJCR17I3, and Daikin Industry Inc. The authors also gratefully acknowledge Poorandokht Ilani-Kashkouli from the Multifunctional Equipment Integration Group, Building and Transportation Science Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory for internally reviewing the manuscript. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan ( http://energy.gov/downloads/doe-public-access-plan ).

Keywords

Adsorption heat pump
Hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants
Metal-organic-framework
Space cooling and heating
Transcritical-CO heat pump
Vapor compression heat pump

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10.1016/j.energy.2025.135846

Cite this

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title = "Review of the potential and challenges of MOF-based adsorption heat pumps for sustainable cooling and heating in the buildings",

abstract = "Heat pumps are regarded as the most suitable means to meet the future demand of heating and cooling in the building, as they require small input of electrical energy and output high thermal energy. Vapor compression heat pump (VCHP) and transcritical-CO2 heat pump are the two major heat pump technologies currently dominating the market. However, VCHP system suffers from its fugitive emission of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants, and transcritical-CO2 system requires high operating pressure (typically 9–13 MPa). For low-to-medium temperature heating and cooling applications thermally driven adsorption heat pump (AHP) provides a better alternative to VCHP and transcritical-CO2 system as AHP uses natural refrigerants and operates at a much lower pressure. But currently available AHP technology has the limitation of low coefficient of performance (COP). Advances in synthesizing metal-organic frameworks (MOF) with high gas adsorption capacity have created an opportunity to address the problem of low COP of current AHP technology. This article reviews the progress made in the past decade in utilizing MOF and conventional adsorbents with different working fluids in AHP technology and compares their performance. The article also summarizes the key challenges for the MOF-based AHP technology and provides the authors{\textquoteright} perspective to address these challenges.",

keywords = "Adsorption heat pump, Hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, Metal-organic-framework, Space cooling and heating, Transcritical-CO heat pump, Vapor compression heat pump",

author = "Shamim, \{Jubair A.\} and Kashif Nawaz and Hu, \{Ming Hsuan\} and Paris Pasqualin and Krishnan, \{Easwaran N.\} and Kowalski, \{Stephen P.\} and Bhowmik, \{Palash Kumar\} and Rajagopalan Parameshwaran and Hsu, \{Wei Lun\} and Yunho Hwang and Hirofumi Daiguji",

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T1 - Review of the potential and challenges of MOF-based adsorption heat pumps for sustainable cooling and heating in the buildings

AU - Shamim, Jubair A.

AU - Nawaz, Kashif

AU - Hu, Ming Hsuan

AU - Pasqualin, Paris

AU - Krishnan, Easwaran N.

AU - Kowalski, Stephen P.

AU - Bhowmik, Palash Kumar

AU - Parameshwaran, Rajagopalan

AU - Hsu, Wei Lun

AU - Hwang, Yunho

AU - Daiguji, Hirofumi

PY - 2025/5/15

Y1 - 2025/5/15

N2 - Heat pumps are regarded as the most suitable means to meet the future demand of heating and cooling in the building, as they require small input of electrical energy and output high thermal energy. Vapor compression heat pump (VCHP) and transcritical-CO2 heat pump are the two major heat pump technologies currently dominating the market. However, VCHP system suffers from its fugitive emission of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants, and transcritical-CO2 system requires high operating pressure (typically 9–13 MPa). For low-to-medium temperature heating and cooling applications thermally driven adsorption heat pump (AHP) provides a better alternative to VCHP and transcritical-CO2 system as AHP uses natural refrigerants and operates at a much lower pressure. But currently available AHP technology has the limitation of low coefficient of performance (COP). Advances in synthesizing metal-organic frameworks (MOF) with high gas adsorption capacity have created an opportunity to address the problem of low COP of current AHP technology. This article reviews the progress made in the past decade in utilizing MOF and conventional adsorbents with different working fluids in AHP technology and compares their performance. The article also summarizes the key challenges for the MOF-based AHP technology and provides the authors’ perspective to address these challenges.

AB - Heat pumps are regarded as the most suitable means to meet the future demand of heating and cooling in the building, as they require small input of electrical energy and output high thermal energy. Vapor compression heat pump (VCHP) and transcritical-CO2 heat pump are the two major heat pump technologies currently dominating the market. However, VCHP system suffers from its fugitive emission of hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) refrigerants, and transcritical-CO2 system requires high operating pressure (typically 9–13 MPa). For low-to-medium temperature heating and cooling applications thermally driven adsorption heat pump (AHP) provides a better alternative to VCHP and transcritical-CO2 system as AHP uses natural refrigerants and operates at a much lower pressure. But currently available AHP technology has the limitation of low coefficient of performance (COP). Advances in synthesizing metal-organic frameworks (MOF) with high gas adsorption capacity have created an opportunity to address the problem of low COP of current AHP technology. This article reviews the progress made in the past decade in utilizing MOF and conventional adsorbents with different working fluids in AHP technology and compares their performance. The article also summarizes the key challenges for the MOF-based AHP technology and provides the authors’ perspective to address these challenges.

KW - Adsorption heat pump

KW - Hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants

KW - Metal-organic-framework

KW - Space cooling and heating

KW - Transcritical-CO heat pump

KW - Vapor compression heat pump

UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/105001502562

U2 - 10.1016/j.energy.2025.135846

DO - 10.1016/j.energy.2025.135846

M3 - Review article

AN - SCOPUS:105001502562

SN - 0360-5442

VL - 323

JO - Energy

JF - Energy

M1 - 135846

ER -

Review of the potential and challenges of MOF-based adsorption heat pumps for sustainable cooling and heating in the buildings

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Keywords

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