Investigation of a novel solar-driven refrigeration system with ejector

The objective of this paper is the investigation of a novel solar-driven refrigeration system energetically and exergetically. The investigated system is driven by evacuated tube collectors and it includes the following devices: generator, turbine, ejector, evaporator, compressor, condenser, throttling valves and a gearbox. The examined system is compared with a conventional system without turbine, compressor and gearbox. In every case, the system is optimized in order to compare the optimum possible designs. Various working fluids are tested for both the systems and finally R141b is found to be the most appropriate choice. For the typical operation case with condenser temperature at 40 °C and evaporator temperature at 0 °C in steady-state conditions, the novel configuration has system coefficient of performance 0.1692 and the conventional system 0.06455, while the system exergy efficiency of the novel system is 1.664% and of the conventional system 0.6349%. Moreover, for the same operating scenario in dynamic conditions, it is found that the novel configuration presents the mean system coefficient of performance equal to 0.09157 while the conventional 0.02786. The results clearly indicate that the suggested system has higher performance than a conventional refrigeration system with an ejector device.