Absorption Refrigeration Techniques with Phase Change Material and Dual Condenser Technology: An Extensive Review

Abstract

Due to unavailability of source heat at times, temperature fluctuations in the Evaporator chamber occurs which is considered to be one of the drawbacks in this system. To avoid this issue, use of Phase Change Material (PCM) in the Evaporator unit has been suggested. PCM is a latent heat storage device which absorbs the additional heat being generated in the Evaporator chamber. Also during the system OFF condition due to some reason, PCM acts as a backup heat absorber as it absorbs all the heat being generated for some specific time period and prevents the rise in temperature. An approach to use the PCM in the absorption system has been made; advantages and disadvantages of using PCM in this system and exergy analysis of such systems have been discussed in this paper. Different approaches made to improve the thermal efficiency of an absorption system by integrating PCM in it have been presented. Combination of absorption system with compression system (hybrid cycles) to increase the overall efficiency of the system is also analysed. It has been observed that the cooling time of the system increases from 50 minutes to 115 minutes in case of pure ethylene glycol as compared with conventional absorption system without any PCM material under switched off condition. Furthermore, refrigerating effect is also improved by installing the mixture of water and ethylene glycol PCM material that results in the rise of cooling time parameter from 50 minutes to 110 minutes during system in switched off condition