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Dynamic study of an adsorption refrigerator driven by CPC collectors

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 Dynamic study of an adsorption refrigerator driven by
CPC collectors
Kolthoum Missaoui, Nader Frikha, Abdelhamid Kheiri, Slimane Gabsi,
Mohammed Ganaoui

To cite this version:

Kolthoum Missaoui, Nader Frikha, Abdelhamid Kheiri, Slimane Gabsi, Mohammed Ganaoui. Dy-
namic study of an adsorption refrigerator driven by CPC collectors. ICEESEN2020, Nov 2020, Kay-
seri, Turkey. �hal-03536805�

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 Proceedings of ICEESEN2020, 19-21 November 2020, Kayseri-Turkey

DYNAMIC STUDY OF AN ADSORPTION REFRIGERATOR DRIVEN BY CPC

COLLECTORS

Kolthoum Missaoui1, 2, Nader Frikha2, Abdelhamid Kheiri 1, Slimane Gabsi 2, Mohammed El Ganaoui3

1. Université de Lorraine, CNRS, LEMTA, F-54000 Nancy, France

2. Gabès University, Energy, water, Environment & Processes (LR18ES35) laboratory, ENIG, Gabès,
Tunisia
3. Université de Lorraine, INRA LERMAB, F-54400 Longwy, France

Abstract
In the current work a continuous solar adsorption refrigerator is proposed for a positive cold storage room of
231 m3 used for fruits and vegetables preservation and installed in the south of Tunisia. After the estimation
of the climatic data and the storage room-cooling load for representative days in the months of March
(spring), June (summer), September (autumn) and December (winter), a dynamic performance study of a
tow-bed silica-gel/water adsorption refrigerator driven by a CPC collector over the 4 referential days is done.
The focus is to study the possibility to drive this storage room by an adsorption refrigerator directly driven
by CPC collector.
A Matlab/Simulink model describing the adsorption unit, the solar collectors and the storage room was used
to simulate the performances of the installation.
A maximum average cyclic coefficient of performance of 0.45 and average cooling power of 11.6 kW are
obtained on day 21 June.
The adsorption chiller can be driven by the solar CPC collectors and provide cooling for most of the
daytime.
Keywords: cooling load, adsorption refrigerator, CPC collector, dynamic performance study.

refrigerants [2] can be a suitable choice to

1 INTRODUCTION
overcome these problems.
Numerous attempts have been made in the
Tunisia is one of the African countries, which
literature to develop and design adsorption
has a high solar radiation. The duration of
refrigeration system and to increase its
sunshine is greater than 3000 hours per year,
performance and efficiency.
with peaks of 3200-3400 on the south coast of
Alahmer et al [3] evaluated a CPC solar-
the country, while the minimum duration of
adsorption cooling system using Transient
sunshine in the north is between 2500 and 3000
System Simulation (TRNSYS) software. The
hours per year [1]
study indicated that this form of adsorption
Due to the scarcity of electricity, the agriculture
cooling could potentially be economically used
field in Tunisia suffers from problem of natural
in cities with high solar irradiation.
product storage especially fruits and vegetables.
Ntsoane et al [2] conducted an experimental
Tons of products are wasted every year.
study on the capacity of a silica gel adsorption
Furthermore, the classical technologies of
chiller used conditions to store fresh mangoes.
refrigeration use CFCs or HCFCs, which have a
An adsorption cooler powered by a CPC solar
negative impact on the environment due to their
collector has been analyzed analytically under
undesirable Ozone Depletion Potential (ODP)
the climatic data of Tokyo by Alam et al.[4]. It
and Global Warming Potential (GWP) levels.
was found that the chiller offers a cooling
In this context, solar adsorption refrigeration
capacity of around 10kW at noon, with the basic
systems which can be driven by low-grade heat
sources and because of their environmental operating conditions, while the cycle COP and
solar COP are 0.55 and 0.3, respectively.
impact like the use of environmentally friendly
 Proceedings of ICEESEN2020, 19-21 November 2020, Kayseri-Turkey
Therefore, this work proposes a study of a
continuous adsorption chiller directly coupled to
a CPC collector and operating under the climatic
conditions of the region of Sfax, (Tunisia). This
cooler will be used to drive a cold storage room
used for indigenous fruits and vegetables
preservation.
2 CLIMATIC DATA
Solar radiation is described by the following
function [4]:
 Daytime - Sunrise time 
I(t) = Imax  sin    (1)
 Sunset tim e - Sunrise time 
The theoretical evolution of the ambient air
temperature is given by the following relation
[5]:
Tmax(m)  Tmin(m) Tmax(m)  Tmin(m)  t -  
Tam =  sin   
2 2  D j 

where Dj = sunset time - sunrise time;
t = Day time - sunrise time;
φ = time difference between maximum radiation
and maximum temperature, here the value is
taken as 1 hour.
Figure 1. and Figure 2. present respectively the
daily evolution of the ambient temperature and
solar radiation over the 4 typical days;21 march,
21June,21September and 21 December.
Figure 1. Evaluation of solar radiation in
Sfax, over the 4 referential days.
Figure 2. Ambient temperature evaluation
over the 4 referential days.
3 COOLING LOAD CALCULATION
Assuming that there is no particular radiation
(2)
contribution or additional ventilation to be
expected and based on the ASHRAE method
(American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and
Air-Conditioning Engineers) as presented in
[6][7][8] a mathematical model was established
in order to determine the cooling load of the
refrigeration system .
A MATLAB code was established to predict the
daily instantaneous cooling load of the storage
room.
The cold room’s dimensions were 7 × 6 × 5.5 m3
(231 m3) and was used to store 20 tons of melon
at optimum storage conditions, indoor
temperature between 8 and 13°C, and relative
humidity of 90%, which aim to ensure the
highest storage life of this fruit. [9]
The type of storage used in this room is storage
in wooden boxes with a capacity of 30 kg
stacked on wooden pallets disposed in blocks.
Three persons work inside the cold room for
handling purposes during an average period of 2
hours per day.
Figure 3. presents the hourly demand of
refrigeration for the referential room over the 4
referential days; 21June,21September ,21 march,
and 21 December. As shown, it was necessary to
cool the room during the entire 24-h period,
including at night. Between 20:00 and 4:00 h,
the demand for the cooling power has low
values.
The hourly cooling load over the daytime is
always above 4kW for 21 June, 4.5kW for 21
 Proceedings of ICEESEN2020, 19-21 November 2020, Kayseri-Turkey

b. Thermodynamic study
Heat transfer to the solar collector, desorber/
adsorber beds, evaporator and condenser are
estimated using LMTD method whereas the
adsorption kinetics is modelled using the Linear
Driving Force (LDF) model determined by
Chihara and Suzuki [10] [11].
The modelling and simulation equations are
adapted from K. C. A. Alam et al 2013 and A.
K. Jaiswal et al 2016 [4] [12].

Figure 3. The hourly demand of cooling Solar system

power for the referential room over the 4
referential days. For the present case a series of enhanced
compound parabolic concentrator (CPC)
September, 1kW for 21 March and 21 December developed by Solarfocus-GmbH with each area
respectively. of 2.415 m2 has been used. The same collector
had been used for adsorption refrigeration
4 SOLAR ADSORPTION system in previous works ( [13] [4] [5] ).
REFRIGERATOR MODELING Heat transfer fluid enters to the collectors is
assumed to be parallel.
a. Working principal Each collector has 9 pipes and the heat flows
serially in the pipes of each collector.
Figure 4. shows a schematic diagram of a The energy balance for each solar collector is
simple solar driven single-stage 2-bed given by the following equation:
adsorption chiller.
=  sf I(t)A sf + m sf Cp sf Tsf, in - Tsf, out  (3)

The heat source is solar radiation, which will be m sf × Cp sf  dTsf
absorbed by a compound parabolic collector dt
(CPC) and then transferred to the adsorption
refrigeration chiller. The collector efficiency can be evaluated by the
A simple two-bed adsorption refrigeration cycle following expression:
consists of an evaporator, a condenser, an
T  Tam  T  Tam  (4)
2
expansion device, and a pair of adsorption beds Sf = 0.75  2.57 HW - 4.67  HW 
(adsorber or desorber based on operating mode) I  I 
which are packed with a desiccant material
(silica gel) to desorb/adsorb the refrigerant where; THW is the mean temperature for hot fluid
(water). and it is evaluated by:
The operating process of two-bed basic cooling Ts f, i n  Ts f, out
unit was presented in the literature [10]. THW  (5)
2

Adsorption unit
Rate of adsorption/desorption
The rate of adsorption or desorption is calculated
by the linear driving force kinetic equation:
dw
= K s (w * -w) (6)
dt
Figure 4. Schematic diagram of a simple
solar driven single-stage 2-bed
adsorption chiller [4].
 Proceedings of ICEESEN2020, 19-21 November 2020, Kayseri-Turkey
 
-U 
 T + Tf, in - T  exp des/ad
w* is the equilibrium amount adsorbed, which is Ades / ad (12)
T f ,out  
calculated by modified Freundlich model as a  m Cp 
 f f 
function of pressure and temperature.
 Condenser energy balance
It is defined for silica gel/water as follow [11] :
The balance equation for the condenser is
 P T  
1/1.6

w* = 0,346  s w  (7) written by the following equation:

 Ps Ta  
mcd × Cp cd  dTcd = -ma dw des
Lv
dt dt (13)
Ps (Tw) and Ps (Tsi) are respectively the saturated
- ma Cp r, v des Tdes - Tcd  + mcw Cp cw Tcw,in - Tcw,out 
dw 
vapor pressures of the refrigerant at temperatures
Tw and adsorbent temperature Ta. dt
Ks is the effective mass transfer coefficient Where the cooling water outlet temperature is
inside the pores, it is given by [11]
Ds equal to:
K s  Fp (8)
R p2  
 -U A 
Tcw,out  T + Tcw,in - T  exp  cd cd  (14)
The effective diffusivity Ds is defined as follow:  m Cp
 cw cw 

  Ea   Evaporator energy balance

Ds  Ds 0 exp  (9)
 RT 
Water properties The balance equation for the evaporator is given
by the following equation:
Saturated vapour pressure of water is given by
Antoine’s equation [14]: dTev dw
( m ev × Cp ev + m r,ev × Cp r ) = -m a Lv ad
 3820  (10) dt dt
Ps = 133.32 exp18.3 -  (15)
 T - 46.1 dw 
- m a des Cp r (Tcd - Tev ) + m chw Cp chw ( Tchw,in - Tchw,out )
Energy balance equations dt

The balance energy for each equipment of the Where the chilled water outlet temperature is
refrigerator are written by the following given by:
equations:
 
 - U ev Aev 
 Adsorber/desorber energy balance Tchw,out  Tev + Tchw,in - Tev  exp 
 m chw Cp 
(16)
 chw 

m des/ad Cp de/ad + m a C a + m a w Cp r 
dT
=
Mass balance
dt
m a H ads
dw
+  1 -   m a .Cp r, v
dw
Tev - Tad  (11) Neglecting the gas phase, the mass balance
dt dt
equation for water is expressed as:
+ m f Cp f Tf, in - Tf, out 
.

dmr ,ev  dw des dw ad 

 m a    (17)
α is equal to 0 during the switching mode and dt  dt dt 
1during isobaric adsorption/desorption process.
β is equal to 0 or 1 during desorption process or System performance
adsorption process respectively.
The outlet temperature of the working fluid from The performance of the adsorption chiller can be
the major system components: determined by the cyclic average cooling
capacity (CACC), and the average cyclic thermal
performance coefficient COPth, these parameters
are calculated for one complete cycle time (tcycle)
 Proceedings of ICEESEN2020, 19-21 November 2020, Kayseri-Turkey

which is the sum of adsorption time, preheating
time, desorption time, and precooling time [15] :
tcycle
mchw Cpchw Tchw,in - Tchw,out dt

The temperature profiles of each component of
the chiller for the day 21 September are
presented in Figure 6.

 It is seen that the collector outlet temperature

CACC  tcycle, start
(18) reaches near to 82 °C while bed temperature
tcycle reaches to 75 °C.
CAAC (19)
COPth  Figure 7. shows the temperature profiles of hot
Q gn
water at the outlet of CPC collectors for the 4
Where Qgn is the average cyclic generator heat, seasons. As shown the outlet temperature of the
which is given by: solar collector reaches values above 55°C for the
typical 4 days.
tcycle
This indicates that the adsorption chiller can be
 Cp T - Thw,out dt

mf r hw,in
(20) driven by the solar CPC collectors and provide
Qgn  0
tcycle cooling for most of the daytime.
The CPC outlet temperature stays above 55°C
Figure 5. shows a schematic diagram of a between 7:00 and 18:00 for 21 June, between
Simulink model for a solar two-bed adsorption 8:00 and 17:00 for 21 September, between 9:00
cooling system consisting of three main and 17:00 for 21 March and between 10:00 and
subsystems describing the governing equations 15:00 for 21 December.
for the climatic data, CPC collector and the For 21 June and 21 September this temperature
adsorption refrigerator. is even above 80 °C which can effectively drive
the adsorption chiller.
5 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

For this study, the chosen half-cycle time is

450s.
The driving heat source flows from 18 CPC
collectors (each 2.415 m2).

(a)

(b)

Figure 6. Evolution of hot water temperature

Figure 5. Arrangement of the solar adsorption at the outlet of CPC collectors and the two
refrigerator component in Matlab/Simulink beds for a cycle time of 900s, (a) day
environment. time;(b) peak time.
 Proceedings of ICEESEN2020, 19-21 November 2020, Kayseri-Turkey

Figure 8. shows the daily variation of the beds

uptake.
The uptake curve presents a zigzag nature which
is the result of increase in uptake during
adsorption and decrease in uptake during
desorption phase of bed.
During the start-up phase a near constant
average bed uptake curve is observed due to low
hot water inlet temperature. As the solar
radiation increases, hot water inlet temperature
rises, causing the bed to desorb more which
increases its potential to adsorb.

The thermodynamic performances of the

adsorption unit are reported in Figure 9. Figure 7. Temperature profiles of hot water
The cooling capacity, averaged on one cycle, temperature at the outlet of CPC collectors for
peaks at 11.6 kW at 13:00 and a maximum the 4 referential days.
average cyclic coefficient of performance of
0.45 is obtained for the day 21 June.
It has to be noticed that, thanks to the CPC
collector, the cooling capacity is 3.8 kW at 8:00
in this day.
The average cooling capacity over the daytime is
above 4kW from 8:15 to16:00 and 9:00 to16:30
respectively for 21 June and 21 September, and
above 1kW from 8:30 to 16:00 and from 9:45 to
19:30 respectively for 21 March and 21
December.

Chilled water outlet temperature has been

depicted in Figure 10. Figure 8. Variation of the uptake
To keep the indoor storage room temperature during adsorption desorption on 21 June.
between 8 and 13°C, the chilled water outlet
temperature should have at least a value less
than 12 °C and this can be released in a part of
time from 9:00 to 16:00, 10:00 to 16:00, 10:00
to 16:00 and 11:00 to 15:00 respectively for 21
June, 21September, 21March and 21 December.

Figure 9. Variation of the average cyclic cooling

capacity and COP.
 Proceedings of ICEESEN2020, 19-21 November 2020, Kayseri-Turkey

Nomenclature

A Area [m2]
Cp Specific heat [kJ/kg]
Dso Surface diffusion constant [m2 s-1]
Ea Activation Energy [J mol-1]
Hads Isosteric heat of adsorption [kJ.kg-1]
Fp Particle shape factor
m Mass [kg]
ma Adsorbent mass [kg]
ṁ Mass flow rate [kg/s]
Qgen The heat generator input [kW]
Qev Cooling capacity of the evaporator [kW]
R Universal gas constant = 8.314 [J mol-1K-1]
Rp Particle radius [m]
T Temperature [K]
t Time (s)
Figure 10. Variation of chilled water outlet U Overall heat transfer coefficient [Wm2K-1]
temperature. w Instantaneous uptake [kg/kgads]
w* Equilibrium uptake [kg/kgads]
I(t) The transient solar irradiance value from
sunrise to sunset.
Conclusion ηsf Collector thermal efficiency
This research demonstrated the feasibility of a
two bed adsorption chiller to generate low air
temperature in a cold storage room destined for Subscript
preserving fruits and vegetables in Tunisia for a
time period of the day when there is high solar a Adsorbent
ad Adsorber
intensity. am Ambient
A maximum average cooling power of 11.6 kW cd Condenser
and a maximum average cyclic coefficient of chw Chilled water
performance of 0.45 are obtained for the day 21 cw Cooling water to condenser
June. des Desorber
ev Evaporator
This work is the first step of a more developed f Heating/Cooling fluid to desorber/adsorber
study on a solar refrigeration system where a gen Generation
parametric study aims to choose the optimum in Inlet
operating conditions to find the best solutions out Outlet
for running the adsorption refrigeration system r Refrigerant
v Vapor
with high performance is done. sf Solar field

System dynamics are evaluated in the absence of ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

thermal storage, which causes intra-day
fluctuations in heat source and evaporator
temperatures, which in turn influence the system
performance. However, in order to adopt the
adsorption based cooling system we need to find
solutions to supplement a high continuous solar
heat source by using other heat sources like
storage tanks and auxiliary boilers.
This work was supported by PHC-Maghreb
19Mag29 project. We would like to thank also
our Ministries and the research units LEMTA
(university of Lorraine, France) and LR18ES35
(university of Gabes, Tunisia)
 Proceedings of ICEESEN2020, 19-21 November 2020, Kayseri-Turkey

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