Performance Evaluation of Absorption Refrigeration Systems using Intelligent Optimization Techniques: A Review

Absorption refrigeration technologies have developed to provide enormous contribution to the industrial as well as residential applications. Providing cooling by utilization of renewable energy mediums as low grade heat and many others, are of utmost importance to the sustainable energy needs and surrounding preserving approach. This study provides an approach of different absorption refrigerating methods and the course of their development from the perspective of thermodynamics and economics. Theoretical and actual use for refrigerating machines with various pairs of working substances assisted by limited as well as new energy with recent advances are included in the present work. Thermally powered refrigeration technologies are not only dependent on nature of energy source but also on cost of the components during their operation and maintenance. Exergetic efficiency, exergy destruction, COP, ECOP and such other characteristics are the essential parameters which need to be synchronized with cost. To deal with these multiple objectives, optimization of the refrigeration systems becomes significant for better utilization of the sources. Many researchers have presented the ways for analyzing the performance through evolutionary algorithms as well as thermoeconomic methodologies. The use of cumbersome mathematical and numerical techniques is always not feasible to provide better performance. The work presented here attempts to encourage the use of intelligent optimization techniques for analysis of performance characteristics.