ETC-Cold Room with Hot Storage Tank, a Reliable Solution for Prevention of Fruit Degradation

Every year in hot and arid areas of many developing countries, large amounts of fruits and vegetables spoil due to the lack of appropriate cooling systems. This problem is doubled in areas having low-quality power grids. To use the high-irradiation potential of hot areas, this paper investigates the solar cooling system integrated with the ETCs. This system is considered to provide a maximum of 5 tons of refrigeration for the annual storage of 20 tonnes of tomato. In this regard, solar-driven cooling becomes an effective method to attain sustainability goals including poverty, climate change, and environmental degradation. Due to the intermittency behavior of solar resources, the thermal storage unit is a solution to this defect. Here, an absorption chiller is going to be heated by a storage unit integrated with the evacuated tube collectors. The results show that the absorption chiller can be fully charged throughout the year, requiring a storage tank and a sufficient number of evacuated tube collectors. When six collectors are in the series arrangement and the case of 24 hours of storage, the least number of ETCs are required. The minimum number is 196.