Experimental study of the performance of a continues solar adsorption chiller using Nano-activated carbon/methanol as working pair

In this paper, a continuous adsorption chiller is designed and constructed with micro and Nano-activated carbon/methanol as working pair that works with solar energy. The chiller used in this study includes evaporator, condenser, adsorbent bed and compound parabolic collector. The collectors used in this chiller is a compound parabolic type. Unlike traditional systems that perform refrigeration only during the night, in this paper the continuous refrigeration system with two adsorbent beds can produce cold during the day. The main objective of this study is to investigate the effect of Nano-activated carbon on the refrigerator's performance for the first time. For this purpose, at first experiments are performed with only 200 g micro-activated carbon in each bed. In the next steps, Nano-activated carbon is added to the bed in mass fractions of 4.7%, 11.1% and 18.3%, and the experiments are carried out at the two temperatures (30 and 34 °C). The results showed that the addition of Nano-activated carbon with various mass fractions increases the adsorption level. As a result, the adsorption capacity increased and the COP improved. Thus, the addition of Nano-activated carbon with mass fractions of 4.7%, 11.1% and 18.3% to the adsorbent bed at 30 and 34 °C caused 11%, 21%, 33% and 17%, 23%, 25% increase in COP respectively.