Solar Energy 81 (2007) 607–613

www.elsevier.com/locate/solener

An efficient solar-powered adsorption chiller and its application

in low-temperature grain storage
H.L. Luo a, R.Z. Wang a,*
, Y.J. Dai a, J.Y. Wu a, J.M. Shen b, B.B. Zhang c

a
Institute of Refrigeration and Cryogenics, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
b
Branch of Jiangsu Province, Chinese State Grain Administration Company, Nanjing 210012, China
c
Yangzhou Grain Depot, Chinese State Grain Administration Company, Yangzhou 225009, China

Received 10 June 2005; received in revised form 1 September 2006; accepted 5 September 2006
Available online 16 October 2006

Communicated by: Associate Editors William Duff

Abstract

A novel solar-powered adsorption cooling system for low-temperature grain storage has been built, which consists of a solar-powered
water heating system, a silica gel–water adsorption chiller, a cooling tower and a fan coil unit. The adsorption chiller is composed of two
identical adsorption units, each of them containing an adsorber, a condenser, and an evaporator/receiver. The two water evaporators
have been incorporated into one methanol evaporator by the use of the concept of a gravity heat pipe. In order to improve the system
efficiency and achieve continuous cooling production, the adsorbers are operated out-of-phase, and heat and mass recovery processes
have been used. During the period from July to September of 2004, the system was put into experimental operation to cool the headspace
(i.e., the air volume above the grain) of a grain bin. Three months of operation showed promising performance. The chiller had a cooling
power between 66 and 90 W per m2 of collector surface, with a daily solar cooling coefficient of performance (COPsolar) ranging from
0.096 to 0.13. The electric cooling COP was between 2.6 and 3.4.
Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Solar-powered water heating system; Adsorption refrigeration; Water chiller; Low-temperature storage; Grain storage

1. Introduction and operation costs. Hence, it would be interesting to

The temperature inside the storage facility is one of the
most important factors to ensure the quality of the stored
grain. Low temperatures can prevent insect infestations,
mould growth, and can also reduce the respiration of the
grain, which leads to an extended storage time. Mechanical
vapor compression refrigeration systems can be used for
controlling the storage temperature during hot summer
seasons in China (Hao et al., 2001). High capacity chillers
are effective in controlling the grain storage temperature,
but such an approach can be economically prohibitive in
some cases because of the high electric power consumption
*
Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 21 34206548; fax: +86 21 34206548.
E-mail address: rzwang@sjtu.edu.cn (R.Z. Wang).
develop an alternative refrigeration device with minimal
electric power consumption, possibly to use solar energy
efficiently.
Solar-powered adsorption refrigeration systems seem to
be a reasonable alternative, since the cooling load inside
the storage room is roughly in phase with the solar energy
availability. Many researches on solar adsorption refriger-
ation have been conducted in the last two decades, and a
number of solar adsorption refrigeration systems were suc-
cessfully developed. Pons and Guilleminot (1986) experi-
mentally investigated a solar adsorption icemaker with
6 m2 solar collector/adsorber, which produced 30–35 kg
of ice per day under the solar radiation of about 22 MJ/
m2 day. Critoph (1988) comprehensively studied the per-
formance limitations of adsorption cycles for solar cooling.

0038-092X/$ - see front matter Ó 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.solener.2006.09.001
608 H.L. Luo et al. / Solar Energy 81 (2007) 607–613

Nomenclature

Ac solar collector area (m2) t time (s)

COP coefficient of performance
Cpw isobaric specific heat of water (J/kg°C) Subscripts
I solar radiation on the surface of collector (W/ am ambient
m 2) ci solar collector inlet
m_ mass flow rate (kg/s) cw chilled water
P electric power (W) hw hot water
Qc cooling power (W) in inlet
SCP specific cooling power (W/m2) out outlet
T temperature (°C)

Headley et al. (1994) constructed a solar adsorption refrig-
erator powered by a combined parabolic concentrating
solar collector with a solar COP of about 0.02. Boubakri
et al. (2000) studied the limits of ice production by means
of adsorptive collector–condenser technology. Tamaniot-
Telto and Critoph (2000) investigated the thermophysical
properties of two types of monolithic activated carbons,
in order to design and manufacture a high performance
generator for solid sorption refrigeration. Recently, Hild-
brand et al. (2004) introduced a new solar-powered adsorp-
tion refrigerator with a mean solar COP of 0.16. In China,
some experimental solar adsorption refrigeration systems
have been also developed and studied (Wang et al., 2000;
Luo et al., 2005). However, most of the systems were inter-
mittent with a small cooling output and mainly used for ice
making. Solar adsorption cooling for air conditioning is an
important area which has great expectations in the near
future.
This study focus in the development of an efficient and
economically acceptable continuous solar-powered air con-
ditioning system. Performance tests of the system were car-
ried out during July to September 2004. The system
employed a new design of solar-powered adsorption chiller
and it was used to chill the headspace of a grain bin in
Jiangsu Province, China.
2. System design and operation description
2.1. The components of the system
Fig. 1 shows the schematic layout of the studied solar-
powered air conditioning system and Fig. 2 shows a photo-
graph of the facilities. The solar cooling system includes a
solar-powered water heating system, a silica gel–water
adsorption chiller, a cooling tower and a fan coil unit.
No auxiliary heat source was provided in order to reduce
costs. The characteristics of the main components are
detailed below.
2.1.1. Solar-powered water heating system
The solar heating unit consists of 49.4 m2 of all-glass
evacuated tube solar collectors, a 290 W water pump and
0.6 m3 partitioned hot water tank. The water pump was
switched on and off by a differential temperature controller,
and it works independently of the adsorption chiller oper-
ation. In the early morning of summer sunny days, valve 12

Solar collector array

Water pump Water valve Wind valve Vacuum valve
Pyranometer Flow meter H Hygrometer T Platinum resistance
Cooling tower
T
Hot water inlet T
T
V12 V11
Condenser 2
Condenser 1
T
V13 Baffle T V7 V6
T plate
V9 Adsorber 1 Cooling water
V5 V4
Partitioned hot water tank inlet
Adsorber 2
V10 V3 V2 V8
Fan coil unit
V0 Evaporator 1 Evaporator 2
V1
Grain bin T
T
H Second stage
T
T evaporator
H Chilled water tank

Chilled water inlet

Fig. 1. Scheme of the solar-powered refrigeration system for low-temperature grain storage.
 H.L. Luo et al. / Solar Energy 81 (2007) 607–613
Fig. 2. Photograph of the experimental facilities. AC, adsorption chiller;
CT, cooling tower; FC, fan coil unit; WT, partitioned hot water tank. CP,
solar collector water pipes; VP, ventilation pipe.
was kept open, and valve 13 was closed. The upper portion
of the water inside the tank was quickly heated by the
energy absorbed from the solar collectors and it could be
used to regenerate the bed of the adsorption chiller. When
the temperature of the water in the upper part of the tank
exceeded 70 °C, valve 13 was opened and the whole tank
was used as heat reservoir for the adsorption chiller. Such
a design allowed the operation of the adsorption chiller to
start as early as possible in the morning.
2.1.2. Adsorption chiller
Boelman et al., 1995 mentioned that silica gel–water is a
suitable adsorption pair to be regenerated by low-grade
heat sources. Since the available hot water temperature
from a solar-powered water heater is between 60 and
90 °C, this pair is employed in the adsorption chiller. The
adsorption chiller (shown in Fig. 1) includes two identical
adsorption units and a second stage evaporator with meth-
anol as working fluid (Wang, in press). Each adsorption
unit consists of one adsorber, one condenser and one evap-
orator/receiver (the first stage evaporator), which are
housed in a chamber to simplify the chiller construction
and to enhance the mass transfer of the water vapor. The
adsorber is a compact tube-fin heat exchanger with refrig-
erant mass transfer channels, filled with about 50 kg of
micro-porous silica gel, and enclosed in a metallic chamber.
The upper and bottom surfaces of the metallic chamber are
constructed with metal meshes to facilitate the refrigerant
mass transfer. The two condensers, similar to tube and
shell heat exchangers, are connected in series. There is a
second stage evaporator under the two first stage evapora-
tors, as shown in Fig. 1, which is not found in the conven-
609
tional two-adsorber refrigeration systems. During the
operation of the adsorption chiller, the chilled water
releases heat to the liquid methanol that evaporates in
the second stage evaporator. The vapor is condensed on
the surface of the first stage evaporator of the adsorption
unit, which is running under the adsorption phase, and
drops back to the bottom of the second stage evaporator.
In this way, the heat from the chilled water is transferred
indirectly to the refrigerant inside the adsorption unit. As
can be seen in Fig. 1, there are three flow circuits in the
adsorption chiller, namely: hot water, cooling water and
chilled water circuits. Each of them contains a water pump.
The rated powers of the three pumps are 250 W, 370 W and
120 W, respectively.
2.1.3. Cooling tower and fan coil unit
A cooling tower, which has an axial flow fan with 250 W
of rated power, is utilized as heat sink for the adsorption
chiller.
The heat from the grain bin is transferred to the adsorp-
tion chiller through a fan coil unit. An air damper is
employed to control the temperature of the air leaving
the fan coil. A centrifugal fan with 750 W of rated power
is used in the fan coil unit, due to the size of the grain bin.
2.1.4. Instrumentation and data acquisition
A number of sensors and instruments are utilized to
acquire the data necessary to evaluate the performance of
the solar adsorption chiller (see Fig. 1). A pyranometer
(TBQ-2 Type) with an accuracy of ±2% is used to measure
the solar radiation on the surface of the collectors. The
temperature measurements are performed with platinum
resistors (PT100) with an accuracy of ±0.2 °C. Turbine
flow meters are used to measure the water flow rate of each
pump. The pyranometer, hygrometers, flow meters and
temperature sensors are connected to a Keithley 2700
multi-meter/data logger. A RS232 bus is used as the com-
munication link between the latter and the computer.
2.2. The adsorption cycle
2.2.1. Continuous adsorption cycle with heat and mass
recovery
The advantages of mass recovery have been demon-
strated in previous literatures (Pons and Poyelle, 1999;
Wang, 2001). With the aid of a vacuum valve (V11) and ele-
ven water valves (V0–V10), the adsorption chiller can be
operated under a continuous refrigeration cycle with heat
and mass recovery between two adsorbers. The operation
scheme is listed in Table 1. Differing from the conventional
two-adsorber heat recovery process, in this chiller, the heat
recovery only last while the resident hot water inside the
adsorber, that started to be cooled, was being pushed into
the other adsorber by the cooling water. Hence, the heat
recovery time is determined by the flow rate of the cooling
water. A programmable logic controller is used to control
the on/off state of all valves.
610 H.L. Luo et al. / Solar Energy 81 (2007) 607–613

Table 1
Operation scheme of the continuous two-adsorber refrigeration cycle with heat and mass recovery
Cycle stage State of valves*
V0 V1 V2 V3 V4 V5 V6 V7 V8 V9 V10 V11
Adsorber 1 being heated adsorber 2 being cooled On Off Off On On Off Off On Off Off Off Off
Mass recovery (adsorber 1 ! adsorber 2) On Off Off On On Off Off On Off Off Off On
Heat recovery (adsorber 1 ! adsorber 2) On Off Off Off Off Off On Off Off On On Off
Adsorber 1 being cooled adsorber 2 being heated Off On On Off Off On On Off Off Off Off Off
Mass recovery (adsorber 1 adsorber 2) Off On On Off Off On On Off Off Off Off On
Heat recovery (adsorber 1 adsorber 2) Off Off On Off On Off Off Off On Off On Off
*
‘‘Off’’ represents a valve being closed; ‘‘On’’ represents a valve being open.

3. Evaluation of the performance of the solar-powered 0.65

adsorption chiller Measured value
0.60

Collector efficiency
Linear fit curve
3.1. Performance indexes 0.55
0.50
The cooling power (Qc) and the specific cooling power 0.45
per collector area (SCP) are calculated by the following 0.40
two equations, respectively:
0.35
Qc ¼ m_ cw C pw ðT cw-in  T cw-out Þ ð1Þ 0.30
m_ cw C pw ðT cw-in  T cw-out Þ 0.00 0.02 0.04 0.06 0.08 0.10 0.12
SCP ¼ ð2Þ o 2 -1
(Tci-Tam )/I ( Cm W )
Ac
The cooling coefficient of performance (COP) during Fig. 3. Instantaneous efficiency of the all-glass evacuated tube collector.
one cycle is defined as:
R
m_ cw C pw ðT cw-in  T cw-out Þdt employed in this system have excellent high temperature
COPcycle ¼ R ð3Þ
m_ hw C pw ðT hw-in  T hw-out Þdt thermal performance.
The solar cooling COP of the system (COPsolar) is
assumed to be the ratio between the useful cooling output 4.2. Adsorption chiller COP and cooling power
in the second stage evaporator (cooling load) and the total
incident solar energy on the surface of the solar collectors. The flow rates of all water circuits and the cycle time
R
m_ cw C pw ðT cw-in  T cw-out Þdt were kept constant to improve the reliability and to sim-
COPsolar ¼ R ð4Þ plify the operation of the chiller. The operation parameters
Ac Idt
for this adsorption chiller are listed in Table 2. The cooling
The electrical COP was calculated by performance of the chiller according to the hot water inlet
R temperature is presented in Fig. 4. The hot water tempera-
m_ cw C pw ðT cw-in  T cw-out Þdt ture required to regenerate the adsorption chiller is between
COPelectric ¼ RP ð5Þ
P electric dt 70 and 90 °C, which can be achieved by the solar water
RP heating system.
where P electric dt is the electric power consumption of
During test days, the chiller began to run in the morning
the four water pumps and the cooling tower fan.
when the water temperature in the upper part of the parti-
tioned hot water tank exceeded 68 °C. The outlet tempera-
4. Results and discussions ture of chilled water was controlled to be within 12–18°C.

4.1. All-glass evacuated tube collector

Table 2
The efficiency of the all-glass evacuated tube collectors Operating parameters of the adsorption chiller
employed in the system was tested according to the ASH- Parameters Value
RAE Standard 93-77 (1997). Fig. 3 presents the measured
Heating/cooling time (s) 900
instantaneous efficiency. It ranged from 38% to 50% when Mass recovery time (s) 60
the inlet water temperature was between 65 and 80 °C, the Heat recovery time (s) 40
ambient temperature ranged from 29% to 34 °C during the Hot water flow rate (m3/s) 0.001
measurements, and the solar radiation varied from 670 to Cooling water flow rate (m3/s) 0.0014
Chilled water flow rate (m3/s) 0.0005
880 W m2. These results indicate that the collectors
 H.L. Luo et al. / Solar Energy 81 (2007) 607–613 611

0.36 6
COPcycle
0.32

Cooling capacity (kW)

Qc 5
0.28
COPcycle

0.24 4
0.20
0.16 3
o
Chilled water inlet temperature: 18 C
0.12 o
Cooling water inlet temperature: 32 C
2
55 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95
Hot water inlet temperature (ºC)
Fig. 4. The cooling performance of the adsorption chiller.
Fig. 5. Ventilation pipes and temperature sensors in the tested grain bin.

The chiller stopped running in the afternoon when the

water temperature in the upper part of the partitioned
hot water tank was below 65 °C. Typical daily performance
42
of the chiller is presented in Table 3. The solar-powered 40
Tam Ta-check Ta-test
water heater could supply hot water to the adsorption chil- 38 Ttg-check Ttg-test

Temperature ( ºC)
ler for about 6.5–8.5 h during the sunny day. The chiller 36
gave an average SCP between 66 and 90 W/m2 with a solar 34
cooling COP ranging from 0.096 to 0.13. According to Hao 32
et al. (2001), the COP of a conventional chiller used for 30
grain cooling in China is about 1.5–2.1. As shown in Table 28
3, the electrical COP of the solar-powered adsorption chil- 26
ler is far higher than that of a mechanical compression 24
chiller. 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24
Time (h)
4.3. The cooling of the grain depot with the solar-powered Fig. 6. Ambient, headspace and grain upper layer temperatures during a
system test day for both chilled and reference bins.

In most grain depots of China, during cold winters, the

stored grains are cooled thoroughly to below 5 °C by cooled and dehumidified to avoid condensation of mois-
mechanical ventilation with ambient air. During hot sea- ture in the grain stack, and then reheated to a suitable tem-
sons, the middle and bottom grain layer temperatures in perature before enters into the bin. Hence, the energy
the bin are usually maintained below 15–20 °C. However, consumption is relatively high and the system COP is rela-
in the upper layer, the grain temperature increases quickly; tively low. Moreover, ventilation with dry and cold air may
even exceeding 32 °C in some hot areas, and to maintain lead to the loss in the grain quality.
this temperature between 15 and 20 °C is one of the key A different approach to this problem could be the cool-
problems in the grain storage (Zhou et al., 2002). ing of only the headspace inside the bin. The cold air above
At present, the usual method for dealing with this prob- the upper layer of grain may inhibit the increase of its
lem is to employ mechanical vapor compression refrigera- temperature.
tors to cool the stored grain to below 14 °C in a short In the experiments, the air from the headspace of the
time. The temperature is reduced by blowing chilled air grain bin was cooled by the fan coil unit and then distrib-
inside the bin when the temperature of the top layer of uted into various ventilation pipes, which are shown in
the grain exceeds a certain value. The ambient air is first Fig. 5. The experiments were carried out from July 28 to

Table 3
Daily performance of the solar adsorption chiller
Test date Solar radiation (MJ/m2) Ambient temperature (°C) Working time (min) COPsolar COPelectric Qc (kW) SCP (W/m2)
2004/07/31 19.6 28.5–37.6 474 0.123 3.27 4.19 84.8
2004/08/06 20.3 29.4–37.5 508 0.125 3.23 4.14 83.8
2004/08/09 17.4 26.8–36.7 423 0.096 2.59 3.25 65.7
2004/08/15 19.5 27.3–36.4 474 0.131 3.43 4.43 89.7
2004/08/26 18.7 26.9–36.3 457 0.124 3.31 4.21 85.2
2004/09/19 16.2 25.2–33.6 382 0.109 3.05 3.87 78.3
612 H.L. Luo et al. / Solar Energy 81 (2007) 607–613

Ttg-check Ttg-test (2) The corresponding electrical COP of the adsorption

32 air conditioning system is between 2.6 and 3.4, which
is far higher than that of the usual mechanical vapor
Temperature ( ºC)

28 compression chillers employed in China to cool

grains. The solar-powered adsorption chiller pre-
24 sented in this study was only a demonstration proto-
type, but if a larger chiller and solar collector array
20 were used, the corresponding electrical cooling
COP could be further increased.
16 (3) Cooling the bin headspace with the solar-powered
2004-7-21
2004-7-28

2004-8-11
2004-8-18
2004-8-25

2004-9-15
2004-9-22
2004-8-4

2004-9-1
2004-9-8
adsorption chiller during hot seasons could inhibit
the temperature increase of the grain upper layer
inside the bin. Thus, this kind of solar adsorption
Date air conditioning system could be considered as an
alternative for low-temperature grain storage in
Fig. 7. Grain upper layer temperature during the experimental period for
both chilled and reference bins. most of the areas of China.

Up to August 2006, there are four such systems installed

in China and it is confirmed that such systems are accept-
September 30 of 2004. To avoid condensation of moisture able for grain storage.
on the grain surface, the temperature difference between
the inlet and outlet air of the fan coil unit was controlled,
Acknowledgements
by regulating the opening of the damper, to be within 8 °C.
Fig. 6 shows the variations of ambient temperature
This work was supported by National Key Technology
(Tam), headspace and grain upper layer temperatures in
R&D program under contract No. 2004BA523B02. The
the chilled grain bin (Ta-test and Ttg-test, respectively). The
authors would like to thank Mr. Z.X. Wang, Z.H. Wang
corresponding temperatures in a similar grain bin without
and Y.R. Tong and coworkers for their help in the
cooling (Ta-check and Ttg-check, respectively) are shown in
experiments.
the same figure to allow a comparison. The results in both
bins were obtained during the same test day. Although the
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