Design, development and performance prediction of solar heater for regeneration of adsorbent chamber

Adsorption cooling is the newest technology that can be used in the distribution of vaccines. The principle of adsorption cooling is applicable to make a new technology called portable vaccine cooler, using zeolite as the absorbent and heat energy to keep cold chain of vaccine which needs to be stored in temperature of 2°C to 8°C. There are many ways to heat the zeolite up. Instead of using fire that induces environmental pollution to heat the zeolite up, the authors choose to use solar energy as the source of the desorption process. The aim of this study is to support cooling module and get the best results of two types of solar heaters to be applied on cooling box. In this paper, performance prediction of two solar heater are simulated using ANSYS workbench, a platform which integrate simulation technologies and parametric CAD system. The result shows that the solar heater type 1 is better to use because it can heat the absorbent chamber up at the temperature of 109°C in an hour running, whereas the absorbent only needs the temperature around 70°C-80°C to make the process of desorption running perfectly.