Mechanical and experimental study on freeze proof solar powered adsorption cooling tube using active carbon/methanol working pair

The freeze proof solar cooling tube, which can produce cooling capacity with the refrigerant temperature below 0 °C using solar light as energy and active carbon–methanol as working pair, was firstly designed and made in this research. This paper focused on mechanical and experimental study on a freeze proof solar powered adsorption cooling tube. The following experimental results could be concluded: at the solar radiation value between 15.3 and 17.1 MJ m−2, the highest adsorbent bed temperature is below 110 °C. The freeze proof solar cooling tube’s cooling capacity was about 87–99 kJ, and the coefficient of performance (COP) was more than 0.11 when the evaporation temperature was about −4 °C.