Experimental and numerical study of a PV/T direct-driven refrigeration/heating system

Abstract

A photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) direct-driven refrigeration/heating system was proposed in this paper. This system had the functions of off-grid refrigeration and hot water supply without using batteries. The solar refrigeration efficiency could also be improved by means of PV cell cooling in PV/T modules and compressor speed controlling. In this paper, performance of this system was investigated by experiments and numerical simulations. The influences of the total capacity of PV cells and water temperature in the ice storage tank were also studied. When the number of PV cells increased, the daily cooling capacity per cell increased first, then decreased. This revealed that the capacities of the compressor and PV cells should be designed to improve the PV utilization efficiency. Total cooling capacity of the system increased with the increase of initial water temperature in the ice storage tank. This revealed that high initial water temperature was benefit for system cooling capacity.