RESEARCH ON SOLAR HIGH-TEMPERATURE ABSORPTION AIRCONDITIONING SYSTEMS

Guoqing Yu, Jinhua Tang, Zhijun Zou Department of Building Environment and Equipment Engineering University of Shanghai for Science and Technology Shanghai 200093, China guoqing.yu@163.com

ABSTRACT This paper studies the characteristics and performance of solar higher-temperature absorption air conditioning systems which employed linear concentrating collectors and double-effect absorption chillers. A solar higher-temperature absorption air conditioning system was designed for a small house. Hourly simulations during a cooling season have been conducted using typical meteorological year (TMY) data. Simulation results show that the solar air conditioning system have excellent thermal performance. The linear concentrating collectors can produce hot water of temperature as high as 120-160oC and the COP of the double-effect absorption chillers can reach 1.2-1.4. The system COP during a cooling season can reach 0.426. Meanwhile, the effects of some factors such as climates, volumes of storage tank, areas of collectors on the performance of this solar air conditioning system are also discussed.

At present, most solar assisted air conditioning systems employ evacuated tube collectors with outlet temperature of 70-90oC and single-effect absorption or adsorption chillers. The overall system Coefficient of Performance (COP) of solar air conditioning (which is defined as the ratio of refrigerating capacity to solar radiation incident on the collector aperture) is as low as only 0.2-0.25, because of the low COP (typically 0.4-0.7) of the single effect absorption or adsorption chillers [1,2]. This paper introduces high-temperature absorption air-conditioning system which employs linear concentrating collectors and double-effect absorption chillers. The chillers of the solar air conditioning systems are driven by high temperature hot water produced by linear concentrating collectors. The driving hot water temperature can get to as high as 120-160oC, and the COP of chillers can reach 1.2-1.4. The expected overall COP of the solar cooling systems is 0.4-0.5. A typical house was selected and a solar high temperature absorption air conditioning system was designed for the house. The capacity of main components of the system was determined too. This paper conducts hourly simulation of the solar air-conditioning system during a typical cooling season. Some factors which affect the performance of the system were also studied.

1. INTRODUCTION As the shortage of fossil energy sources and environmental pollution have become the bottleneck of sustainable development of the whole world, utilization of solar energy is one of the important ways to mitigate energy shortage. Solar air conditioning has attracted much attention from scholars and engineers.

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Proceedings of ISES Solar World Congress 2007: Solar Energy and Human Settlement a- intercept efficiency which is 0.7 in this case; b- negative of the first-order coefficient of the efficiency curve which is 4.167W/(m2goC); Ti- inlet fluid temperature to collectors(oC); Ta- the ambient temperature(oC); C- concentration ratio; IbT- beam radiation on collector aperture surface (kJ/m2gh); Ac- Collector aperture area (m) The modifiers of incidence angles for solar beam radiation in the simulations are taken into consideration. (2) Chiller: A double-effect absorption chiller is employed in this system and its maximum cooling power is 16kW. A chiller of 10kW is enough for the cooling purpose in this case, but the minimum capcacity available from the market is 16kW. (3) Storage tank: The volume of the tank is 2.0m3 for the basic case. (4) Auxiliary heater: When the solar power is not enough, a auxiliary heater is required to heat the supply hot water to 120oC if the inlet temperature is less than 120oC. The maximum heating power of the auxiliary heater is 10 kW.

2. DESIGN OF A SOLAR HIGH TEMPERATURE ADSORPTION AIR-CONDITIONING SYSTEM 2.1 The Cooling Load The solar high-temperature absorption air-conditioning system will be setup for a typical old house in a university campus in Shanghai which will be retrofitted as a model of high energy efficiency. The overall area of this building is 120m2. There are two windows in the south wall whose area are both 6m2. We assume 5 people living in the house and the energy input due to light, computer, etc are 2000KJ/hr. The set temperature for cooling is 26oC and it needs air conditioning all day during summer. 2.2 The Main Components of the System A solar high-temperature absorption air-conditioning system was designed for the house. The schematic of the solar air conditioning system is shown in Fig. 1. It mainly includes the following components:

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Solar radiation Controller Collector Storage tank

Axilliary heater

Cooling tower Pump

3. SIMULATION OF THE BASIC CASE

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Fig. 1: Schematic of the solar high-temperature absorption air-conditioning system. (1) Collectors: In order to get high-tmeperature water, linear parabolic concentrating collectors were employed in the system. The concentration ratio of the collector employed in this system is 25. Total aperture is 60 m2. The collectors are positioned east-west and oriented to due south. They are rotated around a horizental axis. The efficiency of collectors is formulated as[3]
= QU T T = a b i a . AC IT I bT C

In order to study the characteristics and performance of solar higher-temperature absorption air conditioning systems hourly simulations are conducted on the basic case described in the above section. The hourly data during the cooling season of typical meteorological year (TMY) comes from [4]. 3.1 Overview of Results Some overall indice of performance during a whole cooling season are obtained by simulations. The collector average efficiency is 37.5%, the system COP is as high as 0.426 . This is because the driving hot waters temperature is so high that the double-effect absorption chillers in this system can obtain high COP which is mainly between 1.1 and 1.4.

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3.2 Outlet Temperature of Storage Tank and Collectors The water temperature out of collectors and storage tank is very important for the normal operating of the solar cooling system. As shown in Fig. 2, in a typical clear summer day the storage tank outlet temperature is between 110oC and 150 oC. In the early morning from 1:00 to 7:00 and in the later afternoon from 18:00 to 24:00 the outlet temperature of collector is lower because of no solar radiation and heat loss to ambient. At time 8:0017:00, the outlet temperature rises from near ambient temperature to high until the highest (near 150oC) and then drops. There is no great variation of tank water temperature during night due to good insulation and heating from the auxiliary heater.
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Fig. 4 The hourly collector efficiency. collector efficiency (37.5%) during a whole cooling season. Considering the COP of chiller of 1.2-1.4, the system COP in a clear summer day will be 0.6-0.8, which is much higher than the 0.2-0.25 in conventional solar air conditioning systems.

Fig. 2: The hourly outlet temperature of tank and collectors. 3.3 Useful Heat Gain from Collectors The hourly useful heat obtained from collectors in a typical summer day for the basic case is indicated in Fig. 3. They are higher in middle and lower in two sides. It is easy to understand. 3.4 Collector Efficiency The hourly collector efficiency of a typical summer day for this case is shown in Fig. 4. It indicates that in the clear summer day the efficiency of the linear parabolic concentrating collectors is between 50% and 60% during the daytime and it reaches to nearly 60% around noon. It is much higher than the average

4. ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS In order to find out how factors, such as climates, volumes of storage tank, areas of collectors, affect the performance of thus solar air conditioning systems, some additional simulations have been conducted and some valuable conclusions were obtained. 4.1 The Effect of Climates In this case, only meteorological data was changed to Guangdong and Beijing respectively while all other

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Proceedings of ISES Solar World Congress 2007: Solar Energy and Human Settlement

parameters are the same as the basic case. The results of simulation are shown in Fig. 5:
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Fig. 6: Effect of different collector area on the system. 4.3 The Effect of Storage Tank Volumes Fig. 7 shows the results of simulation about the effect of storage on the performance of this air-conditioning system. From Fig. 7 we can see that the tank volume has little effect on the system COP. Bigger storage tank means lower water temperature and higher collector efficiency but lower chiller COP.

Fig. 5: The performance in different climates. We can see in Fig. 5, the solar fraction of the system in Beijing is the highest, Shanghai is the second and Guangdong is the third. It is very hot in summer in all of the three cities, so there is no large difference in cooling load in them. The performance difference is mainly due to the fact that the solar radiation source in Beijing is better than that in shanghai and shanghai is better than Guangdong. The system COP of the three cities has the same trend as solar fraction. In additional to the best solar radiation in Beijing, the highest COP is also due to the dry weather in Beijing which will results in lower condenser water temperature and higher chiller COP. 4.2 The Effect of Collector Areas The effect of collector areas on the performance of this kind of solar higher-temperature absorption air conditioning system is studied here. During the simulation, the collector area is changed from 50m2 to 85m2, the result are shown in Fig. 6. As shown in the Fig.6, the higher the collector area is, the higher the system COP. However it is worth noting that the solar fraction increases slowly after collector area is more than 70m2. The system COP is insensitive to collector area and increases little corresponding to very large collector area variation. Solar fraction is not suitable to be greater than 80% in this case.

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Fig. 7: Effect of tank volumes on the system. The solar fraction increases little after the volume is greater than 1.4m3. A tank of 1.4 m3 is enough for this case. For this kind of solar high-temperature absorption air-conditioning system, smaller tank volume is suggested compared to the 40-100L per collector area in solar domestic hot water and space heating systems. This is mainly due to the good match between cooling load and solar radiation.

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5. CONCLUSIONS (1) The solar high-temperature absorption air-conditioning systems which employs linear concentrating collectors and double-effect absorption chillers have excellent thermal performance. The linear concentrating collectors can produce high temperature water as high as 120-160oC and the COP of the double-effect absorption chillers can reach 1.2-1.4. The system COP can reach 0.4-0.5. (2) The performance of this kind of solar high-temperature absorption air-conditioning systems is affected by weather conditions. It is best in Beijing, then in Shanghai and Guangzhou. (3) The greater the collector area is, the higher the solar fraction are. However when the area is more than a certain value ( 70m2 for this case), the solar fraction increases little corresponding to much larger collector area. (4) The on the system COP and solar fraction is insensitive to storage tan k volumes. Smaller storage volumes than

that in solar domestic hot water or space heating systems are suggested for these systems. .

6. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The research is financed by Shanghai Education Committee Development Foundation (06EZ005).

7. REFERENCES (1) Hans-Martin Henning, 2003. Solar assisted Air-Conditioning in Buildings. SpringerWienNewYork. (2) Ruzhu Wang. 2007. Solar Refrigeration. Chemical Industry Press(China). (3) JohnA Duffie, William A.Beckman. 1991. Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes (2nd ed.).New York: Wiley (USA). (4) China Weather Bureau, TsingHua University. 2005. Special databse for building thermal environment in China. China Architecture & Building Press. (China).