Advancement of solar adsorption cooling by means of heat storage

A solar heat driven basic adsorption cooling system with silica-gel-water pair has been investigated analytically. Two cases have been studied. Performance of the chiller with different collector numbers, cycle time and heat storage. First, the performance of a basic adsorption cycle directly coupled with solar collector has been studied. Later, the performance of the chiller with heat storage has been investigated analytically. The investigation was carried on the climatic conditions of Dhaka, Bangladesh. The study reveals that heat storage is more effective than the direct solar coupling; however, it requires more collectors depending on the size of the storage tank. The analysis shows that cycle time is one of the most influential parameter for solar driven adsorption cooling system. It is also observed that the size of collector can be reduced if proper cycle time was adjusted. The analysis also revealed that the system with 20 collectors (each of 2.415m(2)) along with 1000s cycle time provides better performance for the base run conditions. It is also seen that the solar driven adsorption chiller with heat storage works well beyond the sunset time. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.