Adapting Temperate Crops to Tropical Lowland through Solar Thermal Chilled Water Soil Cooling Process

摘要

he availability of most temperate crops is a function of changing seasons. Thus, their insufficient global supply and consequent seasonal do cause increase in prices. The effect is more pronounced in the tropical countries that too depend on importation of these crops because of unfavorable soil condition to cultivate them (due to high soil temperature). Growing these crops in the tropics requires soil temperature to be as low as it is in the temperate climate. Soil cooling with chilled water from the combined organic rankine and absorption refrigeration cycles presented in this paper aims at utilization of virtutl "free" solar thermal energy as input to run combined organic rankine and absorption refrigeration plant and producing chilled water as output for soil cooling process. The technical feasibility is established based on the overall value of coefficient of performance (COP) and the estimated area of solar collector per unit cooling load while the economic viability is established based on capital and operating costs to be incurred per unit cooling load.