Effect of Operating Temperatures and Working Pairs on Performance of Solar Adsorption Cooling System

Abstract

Renewable energies including solar energy requirements for refrigeration and air conditioning are increasingly gaining interest due to the refrigerants friendly to the environment. However, it was found that these technologies have some limitations like the low performance and their high cost. This paper proposes a comparative study of a solar adsorption refrigeration machine. The study consists in determining the influence of thermodynamic parameters of operation on the performance of the system. This is based on a thermodynamic model using different types of adsorbent / adsorbate pairs. The main parameters considered in this study are: temperature of generation, evaporation, maximum heating temperature, condensation pressure as well as the type of the pair used: activated carbon / methanol and zeolite / water. Simulations for different thermodynamic parameters show that the COP is very sensitive to the generation and evaporation temperatures as well as the maximum heating temperature, on the other hand it was slightly influenced by the condensation pressure. The results obtained have shown that the AC / methanol pair is more profitable than the zeolite / water pair.