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Effect of hot and cold buffers on the performance of a residential scale solar driven adsorption cooling system

Research Authors
Mahmoud N. Abdel-Moez, Ahmed Hamza H. Ali, I. M. Ismail, Ali K. Abdel-Rahman, Ahmed M. Reda and Peter Schwerdt
Research Member
Research Year
2013
Research Journal
7th Annual Conf. on Future of new and renewable energy in the Arab world
Research Publisher
Assiut University, E-JUST
Research Rank
3
Research_Pages
19
Research Website
http://www.aun.edu.eg/future-studies/html/sites.htm
Research Abstract

Abstract: A residential scale solar driven adsorption cooling system was designed, constructed, and operated at Assiut University, Assiut city, Egypt. The system consists of evacuated tube with back reflectors solar collector arrays field of total area 36 m2, a silica gel- water adsorption chiller of 8 kW nominal cooling capacity, and hot and cold water storage tanks of volumes 1.8 m3 and 1.2 m3 respectively. The system was designed to operate with or without both cold and hot thermal buffers. The aim of this study is to investigate experimentally the effect of hot and cold buffers on performance of the chiller, solar collectors, and the overall system performance. The experimental results show that both the chiller and solar collectors operates steadily with integration of the hot storage. In addition, the chiller performance is higher with the hot storage with an increase in the cooling capacity of about 18% and about 10 % in the COP than the case without integration the hot thermal buffer. Also the results show that, the existence of the hot storage is necessary, on the system as it effect on both the collector field and chiller performance. Moreover, the cold storage has no significant effect on the chiller and collector’s performance. The chiller performance is sensitive to any fluctuation in the chilled water inlet temperature. The collector’s efficiency is slightly higher without the cold storage, due to the lower inlet temperature to collector field.