Experimental investigation of saturated pressure and mass transfer characteristics of nano-lithium bromide solution

The purposes of this study are to measure the saturated vapor pressure and the mass transfer rate of lithium bromide (LiBr) aqueous solution in the presence of 40 nm CuO nano-particles with the concentrations of 0.0, 0.01, 0.05, 0.1 and 0.12 wt%, and to research the effects of nano-particles, solution concentration and temperature on the saturated vapor pressure and the water vapor absorption rate. Experimental results demonstrate that nano-particle is the main factor affecting the saturated vapor pressure and the mass transfer rate. The saturated vapor pressure decreases with nano-particle mass fraction up to an optimum concentration (0.1 wt% in CuO nanofluids) while increases by increasing the concentration of nano-particle further, and the effective change ratio of saturated vapor pressure increases first and then decreases as mass fraction of nano-particle increases. The mass transfer rate is also initially increased with increasing nano-particle concentration and then emerges a slowly rising tendency. The effective absorption ratio is enhanced when the nano-particle concentration increases, and the value of maximum effective absorption ratio is obtained when the nano-particle concentration is 0.1%. The effective absorption ratio has the maximum values of 2.20 and 2.85 in 58% LiBr solution with nano-particle concentration of 0.05% and 0.1%, respectively.