Development of a Solar Powered Adsorption Chiller

Heat driven cooling technologies like vapour absorption and adsorption systems are environmentally friendly. Use of thermal compression in these systems saves precious and fast-depleting fossil fuel resources. Solar energy and low-grade waste heat can be effectively used in running these cooling systems. The present work focuses on the development of a solar-powered vapour adsorption based cooling system, which have the potential to be a carbon-free alternative to vapour compression cooling cycles, especially for meeting domestic and office space requirements. Poor heat and mass transfer properties of the adsorbents lead to bigger sizes and more cost. Use of thin beds along with integrally finned tubes has been adopted in this work to augment the heat transfer through the bed. A temperature distribution profile of the silica gel bed has been developed through finite difference method, to have an in-depth study of the heat transfer process during desorption. A test unit of adsorption chiller has been developed for round the year parametric study with a heat pipe based evacuated tube solar water heater installed on the roof.