A combined effect absorption chiller for enhanced performance of combined cooling heating and power systems

Most industrial waste heat (e.g. waste heat from engines) is available as two or more heat sources or in a wider temperature range. Additionally, solar thermal energy has a higher harnessing efficiency at low temperatures while its work potential increases with temperature. However, well-established absorption cooling technologies, such as single and double effect absorption chillers, operate in relatively narrow firing temperature ranges. The use of the maximum temperature range of the sources or of multiple sources together increases the energy harnessing efficiency as well as the productivity of the absorption technology. This paper introduces a combined effect absorption cycle that can utilize two energy sources at different temperature ranges or a single source at a wide temperature range. This new method reduces the capital investment and the operation costs of two conventional cycles that would otherwise have to be deployed in a series for an efficient energy conversion from heat to the cooling energy. The simulation results show that the proposed cycle improved the coefficient of performance (COP) of the system by 11% compared to the conventional separate production of the same capacity at the same temperature intervals. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.