Comparative performance evaluation of the mechanical and adsorption hybrid cooling systems for the cascaded and the serial connected evaporators configurations

Abstract

The goal of this study is to investigate comparatively the performance of an integrated cooling system comprised of an adsorption cooling cycle (ADC) and a vapor cooling cycle (VCC) with two different configurations, namely (cascaded and serial connected evaporators). The ADC chiller relies on the thermal compressor with two adsorption beds, which use three different adsorbents (RD silica gel, RD silica gel 2060, and silica gel- LiCl) and water (adsorbate) as a working pair separately. The thermal compressor operates by outside waste or solar-based thermal sources that have low-level temperatures below 100 degrees C. R152A was selected for the VCC chiller. This article pays particular attention to evaluating the ADC adsorbents and (ADC-VCC) connection configurations based on the first and second law of thermodynamics. The investigations have been implemented at different ADC evaporator temperatures. The effect of adsorption cycle time and ambient temperature on the overall coefficient of performance were also investigated and discussed for both configurations. Furthermore, the ADC and VCC coefficient of performances and the performance ratio (PR) were investigated at different ADC evaporator temperatures. The relation between the adsorbent mass and the cooling load was also discussed in this paper.