K.C. Ng
Professor

BSc(Hons.1), PhD (Strathclyde)


Tel : (65)6874-2214
Fax:(65)6779-1459
Office: EA-07-22

mpengkc@nus.edu.sg


Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

JM Gordon and KC Ng (2000). Cool Thermodynamics, Cambridge International Science Publishing.

Ng KC, Gordon JM, Chua HT, Chakraborty A (2002). Electro-adsorption chiller: a miniaturized cooling cycle with applications from microelectronics to conventional air conditioning, US patent 6,434,955.
 

Gordon JM and Ng KC (1994) Thermodynamic modeling of reciprocating chillers, Journal of Applied Physics, Vol.75, no.6, 2769-2774.

Ng KC, Xue H and Wang JB (2002). Experimental and numerical study on a miniaturized Joule-Thomson cooler for steady state characteristics, International Journal of Heat & Mass Transfer, Vol.45, no.3, 609-618.

Ng KC (2003). Recent developments in heat-driven silica gel-water Adsorption chillers, Heat Transfer Engineering, Vol.24, no.3, 1-3 .

More Publications

Current Research Areas and Activities

Adsorption chillers, known for their environmental-friendly and no major moving parts, employ relatively low temperature heat sources to power the silica gel-water adsorption cycle. The chillers are designed to recover waste heat sources from industrial processes or from the renewable sources and converting them into useful cooling. The major thrusts of our research is to develop suitable operating strategies to maximize heat recovery using multi-bed and multi-stage arrangements and ensuring the delivery of an uniform chilled temperatures from the cycle. Recent research grants received are (i) the NSTB funded project(2001-$403k) entitled, “Experimental and prototype development of the multi-bed regenerative silica gel-water adsorption chiller using industrial waste heat and renewable sources” and (ii) the NEDO funded project (2003-$118k) (http://www.nedo.go.jp/itd/grant-e/index.html)

Miniaturized Electro-adsorption chillers (EAC)

The cooling of computer chips for high performance requires the miniaturization of cooling cycle with relatively high energetic efficiency. The symbiotic amalgamation of the thermo-electrics and the adsorption cycle is one approach where the combined system COP can be boosted to a value higher than if individual system is employed. In the EACs, both advantages of TEs and adsorption cycles are combined – the role of the TEs is to provide heat regeneration during the switching and operational cycles whilst the adsorption cycle has almost no moving parts. Based on our USPO 6434955, a prototype EAC of bench-size is being developed to demonstrate and validate the EAC. This project is funded by ASTAR (project 0221010035 - $917k) for a period of 3 three years, commencing 2003-2006. We have also developed a new pressurized EAC which has been filed for a patent in the US.

Adsorption Desalination

The adsorption EAC is being adopted for desalination of sea and brackish water using our proprietary process (patent filed in 2004 and pending). This is an exciting area of research and we are in the process of looking for an industrial partner for the development of a prototype plant to demonstrate the large scale conversion of brackish or sea water into potable water of suitable quality.