Technical Papers and Presentations

In recent years, extensive attention has been paid on the application of solar cooling for buildings. Amongst cooling technologies, low-temperature solar-driven adsorption cooling systems are emerging viable alternatives to electricity-driven vapour compression systems. They seem to have a promising market potential. The greatest challenge for their widespread use is the reduced thermal and mass transfer in the adsorption bed resulting in slow reaction rates, long cycle times, low specific cooling power and small coefficient of performance. Therefore, the technology still needs research for performance design optimisation.

In this investigation, a three-dimensional unsteady Computational Fluid Dynamics with heat and mass transfer model of solar-driven adsorption cooling unit using silica gel-water, operating in both adsorption and desorption modes is developed to simulate and analyse the system performance.