Design and Thermodynamic Analysis of Solar Air Humidifiers

In this paper, the cooling system of the air humidifier, which is fully powered by solar energy, is designed and optimized. In this cooling system, the ammonia absorption refrigeration system has been used instead of conventional compression cooling systems. Its design was done in a way that the performance of the system has increased remarkably in the environments with high temperatures. The ammonia absorption refrigeration is completely fed from parabolic solar collectors. The device has been designed in such a way that the fan is positioned at the beginning of the cooling system. Thus, to increase the efficiency of the fan and the system, the optimization of some axial fan characteristics has been performed and verified using simulation and testing. Furthermore, for the improvement of the heat transfer to air, the appropriate location of the heat exchanger inside the air duct channel has been determined by finite element analysis in Ansys CFX software. In the next step, the thermodynamic analysis of the ammonia absorption refrigeration and the amount of energy required for air cooling have been calculated using numerical analysis in EES software. The results indicate that utilizing three solar collectors can provide the energy needed for the cooling system. Therefore, the proposed system can be applied to reduce production costs in various sectors of food industry.