Experimental investigation of a mini-type solar absorption cooling system under different cooling modes

Solar absorption cooling systems are available from various reports, in large capacities up to several hundred kilowatts. However, in the range of small capacities (<50 kW), only very few systems were reported. In this paper, a mini-type solar absorption cooling system was designed and installed at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. The system contains 96 m(2) solar collector arrays, one absorption chiller with a rated cooling capacity of 8 kW, and a hot storage water storage tank of 3 m(3) in volume. The chilled water can be delivered either into fan coils or into radiant cooling panels, which are installed to satisfy the demands of the indoor thermal environment of the test room. As for the fan coil cooling mode, it was found that the average cooling output reached 4.27 kW during Oh of operation under typical weather conditions for Shanghai. The PMV (predicted mean value, a measure of thermal comfort) inside the test room could be controlled between -0.29 and 0.32. With regard to the radiant cooling mode, an individual supply air unit was installed for the purpose of preventing condensation on the cooling panels. Comparing with the experimental results of the fan coil cooling mode, the average cooling output increased by 23.5%. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.