An Advanced Solar-Powered Rotary Solid Adsorption Refrigerator with High Performance

Abstract

In this paper, according to practical consideration, a new solar powered rotary solid adsorption refrigerator system adopting activated carbon fibre + ethanol as its adsorption pair has been designed with higher performance. Moreover, the principle of the refrigeration cycle, different components of the machine, selection of working pairs and feasible theory analysis of the refrigeration system all have been presented in detail. In addition, it shows that the new refrigerator has many great advantages including a simple structure, fast refrigeration, higher thermodynamic coefficient, friendly to the atmospheric environment, etc. This paper explains that the refrigerating process is constant, which has a promising potential for competing the 'intermittent' cycle reported before. Through improving the refrigerant performance of heat and mass transfer in the adsorbent bed, the refrigeration cycle has been advanced from the aspect of utilization of the thermal energy from low-temperature level resources. In addition, it is shown that the commercial solar powered refrigerator will be existent in the near future.