Simulations of Solar Thermal Cooling System for a Building at Innovation Park Muscat
Abstract
An increasing demand in space cooling and thus in electricity is not only a challenge for the public electricity supply in Oman, but also leads to an increase of CO2-emission, as the electricity production in Oman relies almost completely on fossil fuels. This work aims to investigate different options of a solar cooling system for a non-residential building at Innovation Park Muscat in Oman with the target autarky from the public electricity grid. Therefore, the two main principles of solar cooling, thermally driven with solar thermal systems and electrically driven with photovoltaics, are modelled in a dynamic simulation environment. The solar thermal system contains double covered flat plate collectors, a s hot water tank storage and an absorption chiller with aquifer cooling for heat rejection. The electrically driven systems consist out of a PV system with batteries and a compression chiller. The results of the simulations show the suitability of solar cooling and give the optimised dimensions for each system. A high correlation between the cooling load and the solar radiation makes the full coverage even at small storage sizes possible, where the PV driven system has an advantage in terms of required space.