Study of an adsorption refrigeration system powered by parabolic trough collector and coupled with a heat pipe

The aim of the current paper is to propose a study of a novel solar adsorptive cooling system, using activated carbon–ammonia pair, coupled with a parabolic trough collector (PTC) and a water-stainless steel heat pipe. A theoretical model, based on the thermodynamics of the adsorption process, heat and mass transfer within the porous medium and energy balance in the hybrid system components, is developed and a simulation code, written in FORTRAN, is carried out. This model, which has been validated by experimentation results, computes the temperature, pressure and adsorbed mass inside the adsorbent bed. The performance is assessed in terms of specific cooling power (SCP) and solar coefficient of performance (COPs). Furthermore, the effect of some important parameters on the system performance is discussed, and an optimization of these parameters is given.The simulation results have shown that there exists, for each aperture width value of the collector (W), an optimum external radius of adsorbent bed (R2). Under the operating and design conditions of evaporation temperature Tev = 0 °C, condensing temperature Tcon = 28 °C, adsorption temperature Tads = 24 °C, W = 0.70 m, R2 = 0.145 m and reactor length of 0.5 m, an optimal corresponding COPs is found to be of the order of 0.18.