Abstract
This paper numerically investigated the influence of adsorbent materials' thermal and adsorption characteristics on the overall performance of solar adsorption cooling cum desalination systems. A case study using an array of solar collectors was conducted to compare the emerging Aluminum Fumarate metal-organic framework (Al-Fum) with conventional silica gel (SG) under typical meteorological data at a selected site. Although the adsorption characteristics of Al-Fum outperforms SG at the material level, the former's low thermal characteristics increased the cumulative heat stored and limited the integrated-system performance. The low thermal diffusivity of Al-Fum slowed down the integrated system's response, providing that the average solar COPs of the SG-based system over different months were higher by 83%, 43%, and 22% at inlet chilled water temperatures of 15 degrees C, 20 degrees C, and 25 degrees C, respectively, and 1 mm fin spacing. However, the best specific cooling power of the AF-based system were higher than those of the SG-based system by - 16.6%, 16.8%, and 30.5% at these temperatures. Furthermore, the SG-based system was more negatively affected by reducing the heat storage initial temperature from 70 degrees C to 50 degrees C, but it attained COP and solar COP higher than those of the AF-based system by 14.9%-63%, respectively.