Energy, exergy, economic and environmental assessment of solar photovoltaic direct-drive refrigeration system for electronic device cooling

Abstract

The cooling systems dissipate the high heat flux of miniaturized and highly integrated electronic devices in order to keep the temperature of the electronic devices within acceptable limits. In this paper, a solar photovoltaic direct-drive refrigeration system with an embedded direct evaporator was designed and tested under different conditions. An energy, exergy, economic and environmental analysis was used to investigate and assess the performance of the presented system based on the experimental data. The results indicate that the highest COP of the proposed system is 8.5 at the compressor speed of 4350 rpm. When the average solar radiation intensity is 776.5 W/m2, the photovoltaic cells generate 1.81 kW h of electricity, where 24.9% of electricity is consumed on the proposed system. The PV cells and compressor need be improved in term of their large exergy destruction (1059.4 W, 86.3 W) and low exergy efficiency (24.9%, 26.8%). The exergy performance of equipment and VCR subsystem is more sensitive to the compressor speed than the heating power. The exergy efficiency of the VCR subsystem reduced by 48.4 %. The payback period is 2.2 years, and the reductions of CO2, SO2 and NOx emissions are 395.1 kg, 11.9 kg and 5.9 kg, respectively.