Abstract
Solar refrigeration employing solid adsorption presents certain advantages over other methods, namely: simplified operation (no moving parts); total autonomy (no electricity and water requirements); and low operation and maintenance costs. Although this system has interested several laboratories it has some disadvantages due to the fact that the apparatus is inconvenient in certain respects. The intermittent and varying character of the operating conditions make the problems of cold compartment thermal regulation, energy storage and automatic operation difficult to solve. In the present work, a computer has been used to simulate the working conditions of this solar refrigerator. Numerical simulation has made it possible to study the behaviour of the performance of a solar refrigerator using the zeolite 13X-water adsorption couple, under various constraints. Particularly studied were the variations in coefficient of performance (COP) as a function of the quantity of zeolite per m 2 of solar collector surface, cold production as a function of solar radiation in relation to various component sizes, variations in exergetic efficiency as a function of evaporator temperature, and variation in the daily temperature in the solar collector when there were cloudy spells. The results obtained reveal the performance stability of such an apparatus, which operates fairly near the optimum even when sizing differs notably from the ideal. This fact enables us to more easily consider the problem of mass producing this kind of apparatus in order to lower production costs: a single size would be able to supply a relatively large range of cooling needs.
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