Numerical investigation of the solar activated carbon/methanol adsorption refrigeration system in Tehran’s climate

Solar adsorption refrigeration systems are used to extract heat using solar radiation based on the adsorption phenomena. In these systems, the temperature of the solar collector plays an important role in the efficiency of a system. In this study, two different models, including the lumped and the distributed ones, are investigated to predict the temperature distribution in a specific solar collector. The operating conditions are the same for both cases. Moreover, for the solar radiation as one of the boundary conditions, the data for Tehran solar irradiation is used. The results of the temperature analysis show that the distributed model predicts a less maximum collector temperature than the lumped model which clearly results in a lower system performance. In addition, it can be concluded that because of using steel as a main material for the collector and its high thermal capacitance, it takes almost 3 days for the system to reach the periodic operating conditions.