Photovoltaic and Photovoltaic Thermal Technologies for Refrigeration Purposes: An Overview

Abstract

Refrigeration systems have a broad range of applications, playing a critical role in human life. Especially, vaccine preservation in rural regions has become more critical than in the past during the COVID19 era. In this sense, meeting the cooling process's energy need with renewable energy is critical, as the grid cannot support it. Thus, solar energy has been extensively studied for use in refrigeration cycles. Compression, absorption, adsorption, desiccant, and ejector refrigeration cycles are frequently used in this configuration. This article discusses multiple studies showing various attributes' impact on a system's overall efficiency. Most previous reviews did not cover PV with refrigeration cycles. So, this paper surveys the literature on PV-powered cooling cycles. For better classification, PV technologies are categorized into three types: PV, PVT, and CPVT. With this regard, CPVTs still have a way to progress due to a lack of studies compared to PV. The works are divided into three main sections as Exergy Studies, Experimental Studies, and Simulation and Numerical Studies. This review paper categorizes and rates refrigeration-assisted solar systems based on exergy destruction, exergy efficiency, and COP of cooling cycles. The results showed that PV panels have the highest exergy destruction in most of the systems. It is concluded that using PV technologies has a great potential to supply cooling demand, especially in a hot climate condition. Moreover, the study's findings are anticipated to aid designers in scaling up photovoltaic-based cooling systems, resulting in more efficient and sustainable designs.

Development and Experimental Study of Smart Solar Assisted Yogurt Processing Unit for Decentralized Dairy Value Chain

“…The power required is calculated to be 0.93 kW; however, a 1 kW compressor motor was used considering electro-mechanical losses. The research depicts that through proper design and optimization of the refrigeration system, less than 1 kW of power is required to achieve one ton of cooling effect (3.5 kW/210 KJ/min or 12,000 BTU/h), which is in accordance with the findings investigated by [13,20,27,28] for high-performance cooling machines. The actual COP results were also conducted under field conditions using milk/yogurt by direct method, and the details of these trials are given in Section 3.4.…”

Assessment of Concentrated Photovoltaic Thermal (CPVT) Systems Using CFD Analysis

“…The CPVT systems are used for both residential and large-scale applications. A few examples of applications for CPVT systems include water heating [11], water desalination [12], cogeneration of water and electrical power [13], greenhouse heating [14], cogeneration of electricity and cooling [15], [16], desiccant wheel cycle [17], building integration [18], textile industry application [19], and heat recovery with organic Rankine cycle [20]. More details of the recent advancements in commercial applications can be found in this reference [21].…”