Analysis of an absorption refrigeration system for air-conditioning of a microbus

Abstract

© 2018 University of Minho. All rights reserved.The present work evaluates the possibility of recovering cooling and exhaust systems energy of an internal combustion engine as an energy source input for an absorption refrigeration cycle. From experimental data of the cooling and exhaust systems of an urban microbus under various loading and rotation conditions, simulations of a lithium bromide absorption cycle were performed. The performance of the absorption cycle was obtained in each condition of use of the vehicle: warm-up, city and road route. The results showed that the cooling capacity was 0.97 kW during the initial phase of warming-up, reaching 7.01 kW in road route. In the city condition, which is the main application of the micro-bus studied, 4.17 kW of cooling capacity was found, which represents 78.9% of the cooling capacity in vehicles of this category.