Design, construction and test run of a solid adsorption solar refrigerator using activated carbon/methanol, as adsorbent/adsorbate pair

The design, construction and test run of a solid adsorption solar refrigerator are presented. It used activated carbon/methanol as the adsorbent/adsorbate pair. The refrigerator has three major components: collector/generator/adsorber, condenser and evaporator. Its flat plate type collector/generator/adsorber used clear plane glass sheet of effective exposed area of 1.2 m(2). The steel condenser tube with a square plan view was immersed in pool of stagnant water contained in a reinforced sandcrete tank. The evaporator is a spirally coiled copper tube immersed in stagnant water. Adsorbent cooling during the adsorption process is both by natural convection of air over the collector plate and tubes and night sky radiation facilitated by removing the collector box end cover plates. Ambient temperatures during the adsorbate generation and adsorption process varied over 18.5-34 degreesC. The refrigerator yielded evaporator temperatures ranging over 1.0-8.5 degreesC from water initially in the temperature range 24-28 degreesC. Accordingly, the maximum daily useful cooling produced was 266.8 kJ/m(2) of collector area. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.