Investigations of heat powered ejector cooling systems

In this thesis, heat powered ejector cooling systems was investigated in two ways: to store the cold energy with energy storage system and to utilize low grade energy to provide both electricity and cooling effect. A basic ejector prototype was constructed and tested in the laboratory. Water was selected as the working fluid due to its suitable physical properties, environmental friendly and economically available features. The computer simulations based on a 1-0 ejector model was carried out to investigate the effects of various working conditions on the ejector performance. The coefficients of performance from experimental results were above 0.25 for generator temperature of lI5°C-130 °C, showing good agreements with theoretical analysis. Experimental investigations on the operating characteristics of PCM cold storage system integrated with ejector cooling system were conducted. The experimental results demonstrated that the PCM cold storage combined with ejector cooling system was practically applicable. The effectiveness-NTU method was applied for characterizing the tube-in-container PCM storage system. The correlation of effectiveness as the function of mass flow rate was derived from experimental data, and was used as a design parameter for the PCM cold storage system. In order to explore the possibility of providing cooling effect and electricity simultaneously, various configurations of combined power and ejector cooling system were studied experimentally and theoretically. The thermal performance of the combined system in the range of 0.15-0.25 and the turbine output between 1200W -1400W were obtained under various heat source temperatures, turbine expansion ratios and condenser temperatures. Such combined system was further simulated with solar energy as driving force under Shanghai climates, achieving a predicted maximum thermal efficiency of 0.2. By using the methods of Life Saving Analysis, the optimized solar collector area was 30m2 and 90m2 respectively for the system without and with power generation. The environmental impacts and the carbon reductions of these two systems were discussed