Design, Fabrication and Analysis of Solar Vapour Absorption Refrigeration System

Solar energy is the most abundant source of energy available in our country. The power of the sun can be efficiently used to harness energy for solving our energy needs. The void of not having efficient technology to tap this abundant energy reservoir has led to search for better technologies and more varied applications. Our primary focus in this paper would be on utilizing solar energy for domestic refrigeration purposes. The system used in this paper is known as an ‘Electrolux refrigeration system’ which is a modified version of ‘Einstein-Szilard refrigerator’. It is a three fluid system comprising of ammonia, water & hydrogen. Instead of a compressor it uses waste heat to run a generator, as opposed to a standard refrigerator. A low grade heat source heats up the absorber-absorbent pair releasing the refrigerant in vapour form. This vapour is air cooled to liquid state at the condenser. Finally hydrogen reduces the vapour pressure of the ammonia liquid entering the evaporator causing the liquid to boil absorbing heat from the cabin and in turn cooling it. The work illustrated deals with the design, fabrication and testing of the aforementioned concept. The system was operated on a sunny day, the collector fluid temperature and cabin temperatures were monitored. The obtained results have been tabulated and the C.O.P and tonnage of the refrigerator were also computed. Keywords—Absorber,Coefficient of performance(COP), Tonnage of refrigeration, Absorbent