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DEVELOP A CONCENTRATED SOLAR POWER-BASED THERMAL COOLING SYSTEM VIA SIMULATION AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES
Impact/Purpose:
Our objective is to design and test a 300W solar cooling system with the coefficient-of-performance (COP) of 0.6 using a parabolic trough. The system will capture the sun’s heat with a parabolic trough, a line-focus high-temperature concentrating collector, to heat the circulating collector-loop fluid, store the heat in a storage unit, and drive an absorption cooling cycle with the stored heat. A simulation tool will be developed to simulate the time-dependent thermal and hydraulic performance of all major elements in the proposed system based on classic empirical and analytical models. Results will be used to guide and support the selection of system components to meet design goals. We will evaluate the COP of the system via simulation and experimental studies. This project will serve as a preliminary study for achieving our ultimate research goal: develop a tri-generation system which produces electricity, hot water and cooling. The primary end-users are developing countries and off-grid rural areas.
Description:
A small scale CSP-based cooling system prototype (300W cooling capacity) and the system performance simulation tool will be developed as a proof of concept. Practical issues will be identified to improve our design.