Thermal design of parabolic solar concentrator adsorption refrigeration system

This study presents a thermal design of solar-powered adsorption refrigeration with the type of activated carbon-methanol pair. The designed module consists of an evacuated glass tube equipped with a parabolic solar concentrator as generator, sorption bed, evaporator, and condenser units. A thermodynamic design procedure and a mathematical model of a steady state system with activated carbon refrigerator have been developed. The adsorber is heated by solar energy collected by a parabolic solar concentrator. The temperature of the working pair in the adsorber, the amount of methanol leaving and reabsorb bed, and the refrigerated box was estimated. An optimize design of the system to achieve higher cycle COP was presented. Maximum cycle COP = 0.576 and COP_net = 0.375 with T _max reached 157.8°C, T _B = 57.5°C, M _ac = 0.907 kg, and the concentration of methanoldesorped equal to 0.206 kg/kg _ac .