Solid adsorption (intermittent) refrigeration principle is widely used in the solar powered refrigeration system for ice making purposes. Most of such refrigeration systems under use a natural adsorbent such as activated carbon and a simple adsorbate (e.g. methanol, or ammonia). A fatal weakness of such a single adsorbent/adsorbate pair is that to acheive the proper condensing or evaporating temperatures, the system must to be operated at the correspondifng saturation pressures of the adsorbate. The pressures are different from atmospheric pressure (i.e. the system is operated at vacuum or under high pressure depending on the refrigerant used). A preliminary experimental study to explore the possibility to adjust the system pressure to about atmospheric pressure by using a synthetic molecular sieve (or may still the carbon), and an inert gas has been carried out in Monash university. (The adsorbate used is still methanol). Through our literature review, this study aiming to eliminate the system leaking problem ultimately is found to be the first attempt of this sort. This paper will report the outcome of the study and pointing out the direction for the further R & D on this topic.
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