Studies on the feasibility of adsorption cooling technologies

Abstract

In the current scenario, for majority of the people and industry needs of the globe, cooling processes such as refrigeration as well as air conditioning are important and major requisites. On the other hand, the conventional vapour compression systems require high electrical energy input and employ refrigerants with negative environmental impacts like ozone layer depletion and climate change resulting from the emission of harmful gases such as CO2, Hydro fluorocarbons and Chlorofluorocarbons with the usage of conventional refrigerants. The solar energy being a renewable source is one of the key solutions to pollution problems and can be used to drive the adsorption cooling machines. With the heat source temperature of even 50° C which is obtained from the low grade energy like solar energy or waste heat energy is feasible to run the adsorption refrigeration system to reduce the operating cost. In the present work, a single bed adsorption refrigeration system is developed and tested using working pair as silica gel and water. From the experimental results, it was observed that this system can be used as alternative to the conventional vapour compression refrigeration system to produce cooling effect. However, the performance of the adsorption system studied is lower than the vapour compression refrigeration system.