Experimental investigation of a solar-powered adsorption refrigeration system with the enhancing desorption

Abstract The paper proposes a novel solar adsorption refrigeration system employing an active enhancing mass transfer method based on the typical basic cycle. In essence, the new method is to drop the internal pressure of the system in the desorption process. The working principle of the hypothesis and the cycle description are explained in detail and analyzed by laboratory experiments. The novel solar adsorption refrigeration system prototype with activated carbon-methanol as working pair was designed and built. Some different comparative tests under different weather conditions were conducted to prove the hypothesis and evaluate the performance of the novel adsorption refrigeration system. The experimental results show that the system employing an active enhancing mass transfer method will increase the mass of desorbed refrigerant by about 20% if compared with a natural desorption refrigeration system. It was also proved that the novel method is very effective for low adsorbent temperature operation, which may help to obtain a COP solar increase of at least 16.4%. And about one and half hours can be saved by enhancing desorption refrigeration system to get the same desorbed refrigerant with the natural desorption refrigeration system. The results of experiments show that the novel system has improvements in the coefficient of performance, the mass of desorption and desorption rate, and the characters of the solar adsorption refrigeration system can be a benefit to further application.