Performance Study and Advantages of a Novel Activated Carbon Adsorption Cycle Run by Sunlight

Adsorption cycle can produce cooling generation efficiently by exploiting sunlight. The study aims to analyze the performance and advantages of the adsorption cycle run by sunlight working with a novel activated carbon. The latter is CarboTech A35/1. A new model equation of the cycle is based on the adsorption thermodynamic at a constant temperature. For the proposed study, a simulation program was developed to solve the model equation predicting the best cycle performance. The main obtained results were validated with simulated and experimental data and revealed considerable concordance. The study showed that, under a typical operating temperature, the best coefficient of performance and the produced ice were 0.778 and 13.87 kg, respectively. Also, those results indicate that the produced ice is improved by reducing the temperature water inside a water tank. In comparison with the non-solar refrigeration cycle, the advantages of the novel one, concerning the daily saving electricity and avoiding penalty tax for CO2 emissions, were 25.42 kWh and 1.13 €, respectively.