Modeling and Simulation of Adsorption Refrigeration System Using Low-Grade Thermal Energy

Adsorption refrigeration systems are among the promising thermally driven systems that can improve the effectiveness of utilizing low-grade thermal energy resources such as waste heat or solar energy. The refrigerants used in these systems are environmentally friendly like water, ammonia, methanol, etc. Though, adsorption systems are the capable alternative for conventional vapor compression refrigeration systems, to date they were not been commercialized for small scale. High initial cost and weight, coefficient of performance and specific cooling power are the major issues to divest the adsorption system from commercialization. This study evaluates the effect of operating and design parameters on the performance of the adsorption refrigeration system. To evaluate the performance of the system, mathematical modeling has been proposed, developed and used to simulate at different operating and geometrical parameters of the adsorption system. Simulation carried out by using the current model has a maximum of 2 % of average error compared with original results obtained from the literature.