Monitoring and Simulation of Parabolic Trough Collector Powered Vapor Absorption Refrigeration System for Rural Cold Storage

Abstract

India is one of the largest contributors to the world’s agricultural products. The majority of people’s livelihood in India depends on agriculture and its allied sec-tors. According to an economics survey in the agricultural year of 2019-2020, India is estimated to have produced around 292 million tonnes of food grain. The share of agriculture in India’s GDP is 19.9%. Even though India is an active participant in global agricultural trade, the total agricultural product export is only 2.5%. Agricultural produce is easily perishable and the quality gets affected which will then affect their market value. To meet the future food demands, agri-cultural produce must be able to store for a longer amount of time for round the year availability. The traditional food storage practices cannot satisfy that condi-tion. These perishables need a proper cold supply chain to increase the shelf life. In this paper performance of a parabolic trough collector integrated vapor ab-sorption refrigeration system was developed and studied. Renewable integrated cold storage would open door to the sustainable energy future.