Performance Analysis of a Solar Continuous Adsorption Refrigeration System

A study is conducted on the performances of a solar powered continuous-adsorption refrigerator considering two particular days as references cases,namely,the summer solstice(June 21st)and the autumn equinox(September 21st).The cooling capacity,system performance coefficient and the daily rate of available cooling energy are assessed.The main goal is to compare the performances of a solar adsorption chiller equipped with a hot water tank(HWT)with an equivalent system relying on solar collectors with no heat storage module.The daily cooling rates for the solar refrigerator are found to be 102.4 kWh and 74.3 kWh,respectively,on June 21st and on September 21st,using a total collector’s area of 43.47 m2.The corresponding values for the adsorption chiller equipped with a hot water tank of 2 m3(and using a total collector’s area of 72.45 m2),are 127.1 kWh and 106.13 kWh,respectively.

Studies on Benign Working Pairs for Adsorption Refrigeration

Water and ethanol were selected as refrigerants, 13x molecular sieve, silica gel, activated carbon and adsorbents NA and NB prepared by authors were selected as adsorbents, and the performance of adsorption working pairs in adsorption refrigeration system was studied. The adsorption isotherms of adsorbents (NA and NB) were obtained by high vacuum gravimetric method. Desorption properties of adsorbents were analyzed and compared by thermal analysis method. The performance parameters of adsorption refrigerat...

Adsorption Refrigeration Performance of Shaped MIL-101-Water Working Pair

A new metal-organic framework of MIL-101 was synthesized by hydrothermal method and the powder prepared was pressed into a desired shape. The effects of molding on specific surface area and pore structure were investigated using a nitrogen adsorption method. The water adsorption isotherms were obtained by high vacuum gravimetric method, the desorption temperature of water on shaped MIL-101 was measured by thermo gravimetric analyzer, and the adsorption refrigeration performance of shaped MIL-101-water working pair was studied on the simulation device of adsorption refrigeration cycle system. The results indicate that an apparent hysteresis loop ap-pears in the nitrogen adsorption/desorption isotherms when the forming pressure is 10 MPa. The equilibrium ad-sorption capacity of water is up to 0.95 kg·kg^-1 at the forming pressure of 3 MPa （MIL-101-3）. The desorption peak temperature of water on MIL-101-3 is 82℃, which is 7 ℃ lower than that of silica gel, and the desorption temperature is no more than 100 ℃. At the evaporation temperature of 10 ℃, the refrigeration capacity of MIL-101-3-water is 1059 kJ·kg^-1, which is 2.24 times higher than that of silica gel-water working pair. Thus MIL-101-water working pair presents an excellent adsorption refrigeration performance.

Effect of Adsorbent Diameter on the Performance of Adsorption Refrigeration

Adsorbents are important components in adsorption refrigeration. The diameter of an adsorbent can affect the heat and mass transfer of an adsorber. The effect of particle diameter on effective thermal conductivity was investigated. The heat transfer coefficient of the refrigerant and the void rate of the adsorbent layer can also affect the effective thermal conductivity of adsorbents. The performance of mass transfer in the adsorber is better when pressure drop decreases. Pressure drop decreases with increasing permeability. The permeability of the adsorbent layer can be improved with increasing adsorbent diameter. The effect of adsorbent diameter on refrigeration output power was experimentally studied. Output power initially increases and then decreases with increasing diameter under different cycle time conditions. Output power increases with decreasing cycle time under similar diameters.

An Application of Nonlinear Autoregressive(NARX)Model to Predict Adsorbent Bed Temperature of Solar Adsorption Refrigeration System

In any solar adsorption refrigeration system,there are three major components:a solar collector adsorbent bed,a condenser and an evaporator.All of those components operate at different temperature levels.A solar collector with a tubular adsorbent configuration is proposed and numerically investigated.In this study,a nonlinear auto-regressive model with exogenous input is applied for the prediction of adsorbent bed temperature during the heating and desorption period.The developed neuronal model uses the MATLAB Network toolbox to obtain a better configuration network,applying multilayer feed-forward,the TANSIG transfer function,and the back-propagation learning algorithm.The input parameters are ambient temperature and the uncontrolled natural factor of solar radiation.The output network contains a variable representing the adsorbent bed temperature.The values obtained from the network model were compared with the experimental data,and the prediction performance of the network model was examined using various performance parameters.The mean square error(MSE)and the statistical coefficient of determination(R2)values are excellent numerical criteria for evaluating the performance of a prediction tool.A well-trained neural network model produces small MSE and higher R2 values.In the current study,the adsorbent bed temperature results obtained from a neural network with a two neuron in hidden layer and the number of the tapped time-delays d=9 provided a reasonable degree of accuracy:MSE=1.0121 and R2=0.99864 and the index of agreement was 0.9988.This network model,based on a high-performance algorithm,provided reliable and high-precision results concerning the predictable temperature of the adsorbent bed.

Heat Recovery for Adsorption Refrigeration System via Pinch Technology

An adsorption refrigeration system can be driven by low grade heat and uses natural refrigerant with the advantage of reducing the greenhouse gases emission.However,one of the weaknesses is its low efficiency and more importantly its high cost.The recovery of internal waste heat becomes therefore very important in order to improve the coefficient of performance(COP).Analysis based on pinch technology can be helpful to optimal heat recovery operation.In this paper,temperature-heat diagrams and problem tables for adsorption refrigeration systems are proposed and analyzed using Pinch Technology.The results show that pinch point is located between beds and the main waste heat needs to be recovered between beds.Dynamic characteristic(time factor)of adsorption refrigeration system is the main resistance for heat recovery.The effect of pinch point temperature difference on the system COP is not distinct.Furthermore,when the driving temperature is 90°C,the COP of adsorption refrigeration via optimization of pinch analysis is 0.73 which is fairly comparable to Li Br-water absorption refrigeration system.Pinch Technology can be adopted in different types of adsorption refrigeration systems(two-bed,four-bed,mass recovery,et al.).

Composite adsorbents of CaCI2 and sawdust prepared by carbonization for ammonia adsorption refrigeration

Composite adsorbents of CaC12 and sawdust prepared by carbonization for adsorption refrigeration with NH3 as refrigerant are tested, and the effects of carboniza tion temperature on the sorption capacity and rate are analyzed. The results show that the amount of pores in the sawdust of the composite adsorbents carbonized, apart from the content of CaCI2, is the most dominant factor influencing the NH3 sorption on composite adsorbents. The optimum carbonization temperature is 700℃, which gives the maximal NH3 sorption capacity as high as 0.774 kg of NH3 per kg of the composite, and the specific cooling power is approximately between 338 and 869 W/kg with the cycle duration varying from 5 to 20 minutes. The present study demonstrates that the composite absorbent of CaC12 and sawdust prepared by carbonization is more promising and competitive for adsorption refrigeration application.

Experimental adsorption equilibrium study and comparison of zeolite with water and ethanol for cooling systems

Two adsorption refrigeration working pairs of zeolite with water and ethanol were studied and the parameters of Dubinin-Astakhov model were regressed using the experimental data of equilibrium. The coefficient of heterogeneity varied from 1.305 to 1.52 for the zeolite-water pair and from 1.73 to 2.128 for zeolite-ethanol pair. The maximum adsorption capacity varied from 0.315 to 0.34 for zeolite-water and 0.23 to 0.28 for zeolite-ethanol, respectively. The results showed that the zeolite-water pair is suitable for solar energy cooling not only because of the high latent heat of vaporization of water but also because of the better equilibrium performance. On the other hand, zeolite-ethanol gives a high adsorption capacity at high regeneration tem-perature, which means it can be used in heat engine systems like buses and cars.

Study on the Irreversible Thermodynamics of a Marine Engine Exhaust-powered Adsorption Refrigerating System

This study investigates the heat and mass transfer mechanism of a marine engifie exhaust-powered adsorption refrigerating system by using irreversible thermodynamics. The equations of entropy-production rate and the linear phenomenological equations of thermodynamic flux and force are established. The conventional experimental facilities of unit tube are developed and the phenomenological coefficients are obtained by fitting the experimental data. It is concluded that the thermodynamic process in the adsorbent bed is determined by the coupling effect of the heat and mass transfer; furthermore, the mass transfer is determined by the heat transfer. Taking some measures to increase heat transfer can improve the performance of the adsorption refrigerating system. The conclusions presented in this paper may be of value to the engineering applications of the system.

Preparation of composite adsorbent of sawdust and CaCl_2 by carbonization method for creating pore

To solve the problem of swelling and agglomeration of CaCl2 during the process of ammonia adsorption and improve the performance of mass transfer, we present a new method for the preparation of adsorbent. The CaCl2 is first immerged into sawdust by soaking method, then the composite adsorbent is prepared by carbonizing the mixture of CaCl2 and sawdust. The SEM image and elements analysis indicated that the new adsorbent has high porosity and uniform distribution of CaCl2 due to carbonization under temperature of 700℃. The performance testing of ammonia adsorption showed that under the conditions of evaporation temperature of -5℃ and condensation temperature of 40℃, the ammonia uptake reaches 0.204, 0.253 and 0.285 kg/kg, the specific cooling power （SCP） is 868.96, 540.02 and 405.16 W/kg, and the average adsorption rate is 6.79×10^-4, 4.22×10^-4 and 3.17×10^-4 kg/kg/s when the adsorption time is 5, 10 and 15 min, respectively. The problems of swelling and agglomeration of CaCl2 are solved.

A Mechanical and Experimental Study on the Heat Loss of Solar Evacuated Tube

The experimental system of heat loss of all-glass evacuated solar collector tubes(evacuated tube) is firstly designed and constructed,which uses electric heater as thermal resource.The equilibrium temperatures are less than±1℃during the test.and the temperature differences of up/middle/low node in the tube are less than 1℃,3℃,and 7℃respectively.The heat loss of evacuated tube increases about 2.7%with vacuum state of 0.01--1 mPa,and it has the best performance at tube temperature of 20--280℃.The invalidation tube(>200 mPa) has the biggest heat loss that increases linearly with the tube temperature.The evacuated tubes with the vacuum of 0.01-1 mPa are suitable for most solar adsorption refrigeration.

Integration of evacuated solar collectors with an adsorptive ice maker for hot climate region

This research study compares the steady-state and dynamic behaviour of a solar-powered activated carbon-35(AC35)/methanol-based vapour adsorption refrigeration system for production of ice at hot climate region.Ther-modynamic comparisons are made with the coefficient of performance(COP),system COP(SCOP),specific refrig-eration capacity(SRC)and critical parameters such as cycle time and ice production rate are quantified.Further,the sustainability of the proposed ice maker has proven by integrating economic and environmental perceptions.The minimum solar flux required to ensure continuous ice production was found 800 W/m^(2).Moreover,the max-imum ice production rate and COP were decreased by 32.36%and 37.63%respectively when the system was operated under real ambient conditions.The proposed solar adsorptive ice maker achieved maximum SRC of 61.6 g m^(−2)during April month and reduced the CO_(2)emissions by 12.82 ton annually.