A Solar-Powered Compound System for Heating and Cooling

Abstract

In this paper, a solar-powered compound system for heating and cooling was designed and constructed in a golf course located in Hsinchu, Taiwan. Taiwan cocates in subtropical area and has abundant solar energy resource. In summer, about one third of the electricity may be consumed for air-conditioning in buildings. The need of air-conditioning is consistent with the solar radiation of the day and the season. Therefore, it would be very meaningful to use solar energy to produce chilled water for air-conditioning with the heat-driven chiller.

An integrated, two-bed, closed-type adsorption chiller was developed in the Industrial Technology Research Institute in Taiwan. Plate fin and tube heat exchangers were adopted as an adsorber and evaporator/condenser. Some test runs have been conducted in the laboratory. Under the test conditions of 80 °C hot water, 30 °C cooling water, and 14 °C chilled water inlet temperatures, a cooling power of 9 kW and a COP (coefficient of performance for cooling) of 0.37 can be achieved. It has provided a SCP (specific cooling power) of about 72 W/(kg adsorbent).

Some field tests have been performed from July to October 2006 for providing air conditioning and hot water. The efficiency of the collector field lies in 18.5%~32.4%, with an average value of 27.3%. The COP of the adsorption chiller lies in 33.8%~49.7%, with an average COP of 40.3% and an average cooling power of 7.79 kW. A typical daily operation shows that the efficiency of the solar heating system, the adsorption cooling and the entirely solar cooling system is 28.4%, 45.2%, and 12.8% respectively.