Experimental and Numerical Analysis of Solar Powered Absorption Refrigeration System Using Nano Refrigerant and Organic Liquid

Abstract

Refrigeration is a technology that helps to human in food preservation, control of indoor air temperature and industrial process control. The refrigerating and air conditioning systems use about 15% of the worldand#8223;s electric energy. Inefficient use of electric energy in refrigerating and air conditioning systems is a waste of important resources and contributes to global warming. Generally, Vapour absorption refrigeration (VAR) system and Vapour compression refrigeration (VCR) system are used to control the temperature. In VCR system, electricity is required to accomplish the objective of removing heat from a region which is at lower temperature. The electricity consumption is proportional to the rate of heat transfer in condenser and evaporator of VCR system. newlineVAR system has low running cost because it has no electricity required like VCR system. The VAR system is not used CFC refrigerant as a result it produces zero ozone layer depletion. It is also heat operated system. Accordingly it is generally accepted as a future candidate for economic and efficient use of solar energy in cooling applications. Irrespective of above advantage of VAR system it is not popular for commercial use because of its poor performance compared to VCR system. The performance of VAR system is enhanced by increasing heat transfer in generator, condenser, evaporator, absorber and solution heat exchanger. The heat transfer in all main parts of VAR system is improved by addition of nanoparticles in working pair. newlineThe objective of this research is to investigate the effect of nanoparticles on Coefficient of Performance (COP) and thermal load of major parts (condenser, generator, absorber and evaporator) of absorption refrigeration system using H2O-Ethylene glycol. The nanoparticles of Al2O3 are mixed into the H2O- Ethylene glycol solution to form the binary nanofluid. The absorption refrigeration system with capacity of 0.5 ton was designed and developed to carry out experimental analysis. newlinevii newlineExperimentation part involves the preparation of na