Parametric Study of a Solar Heat Driven Silica Gel–Water Paired Adsorption Chiller

Abstract

Heat driven sorption based cooling systems are gaining interest as they are environmentally friendly and have the potential to save precious fossil fuel resources. Low grade thermal sources like solar or waste heat can run a silica gel-water paired adsorption chiller to generate chilled water below 10°C. However, the performance of the adsorption chillers is poor when compared to vapour absorption or vapour compression based cooling systems. An effort has been made in this work to analyze the influence of different operating parameters on the cooling performance of a silica gel-water adsorption chiller driven by hot water from an evacuated tube solar thermal collector system. A cycle simulation program verifies the effect of heat transfer fluids’ temperatures and the cycle time on the cooling capacity and COP of the chiller. An optimized operating strategy of the chiller, based on either maximum cooling capacity or maximum COP, may be found out using this work. Cycle time, driving source temperature and the cooling water temperature are found to considerably affect the performance of the chiller.

Keywords: Adsorption chiller, solar heat, silica gel-water, cycle simulation, parametric study

Cite this Article

Chakraborty A, Choudhury B. Parametric Study of a Solar Heat Driven Silica Gel–Water Paired Adsorption Chiller. Journal of Alternate Energy Sources & Technologies. 2015; 6(2): 19–29p.