Effect of desorption parameters on performance of solar water-bath solid adsorption ice-making system

• Novel solar water-bath solid adsorption ice-making system.
• Adsorbent bed temperature in water bath was homogeneous.
• Influences of desorption temperature and time on performance were studied.
• Maximum daily ice-making capacity of 7.7 kg was achieved.
• 10 h was the optimal desorption time.

A novel solar water-bath solid adsorption ice-making system with activated carbon-methanol as adsorption working pairs was designed and constructed. The experimental results demonstrated that the desorption temperature and the desorption time had important influences on performance of the ice-making system. The daily ice-making capacity of 5.1 kg and refrigeration cycle coefficient of performance (COP) of 0.0322 could be obtained when the desorption temperature was maintained at 94 °C. However, there were no ice-making phenomenon when the desorption temperature was respectively maintained at 85 °C and 75 °C. With the increasing of desorption time from 7 h to 12 h when the desorption temperature was maintained at 94 °C, the COP of the system dropped gradually from 0.0507 to 0.0370, and the heat utilization efficiency decreased from 0.5969 to 0.4608 due to the gradual increase of energy imported into the system. The daily ice-making capacity increased rapidly from 5.5 kg to 7.6 kg when the desorption time increased from 7 h to 10 h, however, the daily ice-making capacity increased slightly from 7.6 kg to 7.7 kg when the desorption time was increased from 10 h to 12 h. There was an optimal desorption time of 10 h for the system.