Experimental Study of Solar Powered Adsorption Refrigeration System

The sun is an outstanding energy source for mankind. It is clean and comes to the earth for free. There is no need to drill and refine it or mine it out of the ground. The devices needed to gather its energy are simple, quiet and on-polluting. International environment protection initiatives have led to the intensification of research efforts on development of ozone and global warming safe refrigeration technology. In recent years, increasing attention is being given to the use of waste heat and solar energy in energizing refrigerating systems. Solar powered refrigeration and air-conditioning have been very attractive during the last twenty years, since the availability of sunshine and the need for refrigeration both reach maximum levels in the same season. Conventional cooling technologies are generally based on the electrically driven refrigeration system. These systems have several disadvantages: they require high levels of primary energy consumption, causing electricity peak loads and employ refrigerants with negative environmental impacts. Solar adsorption refrigeration is an option to overtake the drawbacks of the conventional cooling system.The adsorption refrigeration is based on the evaporation and condensation of a refrigerant combined with adsorption. This project will describes the design and fabrication of the experimental chamber, the experimental procedure and its feasibility towards development of an alternative eco-friendly refrigeration cycle for replacement of chlorofluorocarbons. The objective of this project is to establish an alternative eco-friendly refrigeration cycle for producing a temperature usually encountered in a conventional refrigerator. By manufacturing such type of refrigerator adds new dimension to the world of refrigeration. This refrigerator gives some amount of relief to the refrigeration world by making it independent of electric power supply and zero running cost.This system designed by using pair of silica gel as adsorbing material and water as a refrigerant. This system is capable of cooling down a load of 10 litres initially at 35oC; down to 08o Causing only solar energy produced by a flat plate solar collector.