A small scale solar absorption cooling system has been designed, fabricated and tested. The performance of the system has been analysed under the meteorological conditions of Malaysia. The system consists of two main parts which are evacuated solar collector and absorption cooling system. In this study the evacuated solar collector tubes was fabricated in our laboratory by recycled materials. The absorption cooling system is divided into four main components which are generator, condenser, expansion valve and evaporator. A series of experiments were performed to analyze the performance of the system at Melaka location. In this paper the experiment results can be categorized into sunny and semi-cloudy days. The maximum efficiency for evacuated tube solar collector was 64.7% and 52.1% for sunny and semi-cloudy days, respectively. The maximum value of solar fraction from sunny day and semi-cloudy day were 0.67 and 0.58, respectively. The solar system provided 17.5% and 7.75% of overall energy required in running the cooling system in sunny day and semi-cloudy day, respectively. The results showed that any increase of energy at evaporator as a result of increase in solar radiation will increase the efficiency of the solar collector as well as the performance of the absorption cooling system.

Full text: IJEIR_1587_Final.pdf