Resumen

VIDAL, Humberto  y  COLLE, Sergio. HOURLY SIMULATION OF A COMBINED EJECTOR-VAPOR COMPRESSION REFRIGERATION SYSTEM ASSISTED BY SOLAR ENERGY AND NATURAL GAS. Ingeniare. Rev. chil. ing. [online]. 2009, vol.17, n.1, pp. 68-75. ISSN 0718-3305.  doi: 10.4067/S0718-33052009000100007.

Among the thermally driven cooling systems assisted by solar energy and natural gas, the ejector cooling system has received special attention. This system is an interesting refrigeration technology due to its construction simplicity, absence of moving parts, operation at lower temperatures and a low operational cost. However, the coefficient of performance of ejector cycle is usually low. The double stage ejector cooling cycle assisted by solar energy system appears as an attractive solution to this problem. The first stage is performed by a mechanical compression cycle with R-134a as the working fluid, while the second stage is performed by a thermally driven ejector cycle with R-141b. Flat plate collectors and an auxiliary energy burner provide heat to the ejector cycle. This paper describes the hourly simulation of a combined ejector-vapor compression refrigeration system assisted by solar energy and natural gas. The combined solar refrigeration system is modeled using the TRNSYS-EES simulation tool and the typical meteorological year data containing the weather data of Florianópolis Brazil. The results obtained from the computational simulation performed in this system show that the combined ejector-vapor compression cooling cycle is more advantageous than the simple ejector cooling cycle. Finally, the computational model developed in this paper might be used to perform a thermo-economical optimization of the system in future works.

Palabras clave : Ejector; hourly simulation; refrigeration; solar.