Design and Construction of a Continuous Solar Absorption Refrigeration Unit

Abstract

The main objective of this thesis is to design and construct a continuous solar absorption refrigeration machine. A solar heated ammonia-water refrigeration machine with 0.111kw cooling capacity was designed and built. It consists of five heat exchangers (generator, condenser, evaporator, absorber and solution heat exchanger),two pumps, two throttle valves, two cooling water tanks and solar collectors with storage tanks(two evacuated and two flat plate collectors). The refrigeration unit was set up on roof of the north building of Faculty of Engineering, Khartoum University. A series of experiments were carried out to evaluate the performance of the heat exchangers and the solar collector fields. Then the absorption machine was tested to validate the design procedure and to evaluate the impact of the system components on the overall performance of the refrigerating system. It was found that reduction of heat losses, increase of streams flow rates, increase of delivery temperature of the evacuated collector field and further optimization of the system components are necessary for better system performance