Performance of Solar Adsorption Cooling System with Different Solar Collectors Technologies

Abstract

The use of different technologies for collecting solar energy in the operation of the adsorption chiller unit is the topic of this article. A theoretical study was done through the simulation program TRNSYS. In this research, the effect of parabolic trough concentrator, compound parabolic concentrator, and the evacuated tube collector on the thermal performance of the absorption refrigeration unit was investigated in terms of cooling capacity, coefficient of performance a and the operating period of the adsorption chiller through the summer climatic condition of Cairo. The results proved that the parabolic trough concentrator (PTC) has the best effect on the performance of the 7 kW adsorption unit, where the maximum outlet collector temperature was 102 °C compare to 95.8 and 87.3 °C for the Compound Parabolic Concentrator (CPC) and the Evacuated Tube Collector (ETC) respectively. The collector type does not affect the COP of the adsorption unit but affects the operation time. For solar collectors of 20 m2, the weekly operation periods were 47, 32.24, and 25.75 hours for the PTC, CPC, and ETC respectively. These values increase with increasing the collector area. Also, for different storage tank capacities, the PTC has the best effect on the operation period of the adsorption unit compare to the other solar collectors.