Performance and Greenhouse Gas Analysis of a Solar Adsorption Chiller for Canadian Residential Applications
Abstract
Around the world space cooling makes up a large portion of the peak electrical demand. A large electrical peak on the grid can cause fossil fuel and other non-sustainable power facilities to ramp up or turn on which produces large amounts of carbon dioxide. One way to reduce the cooling demand on the electrical grid is to use solar cooling technologies such as an adsorption chiller. Recent developments have allowed adsorption chillers to be able to provide higher cooling power at lower hot water temperatures, allowing the technology to pair well with a flat plate solar collector. A performance map was generated from an experimental setup with a 16 kW silica-gel adsorption chiller. The performance map is used in a TRNSYS model to linearly determine the performance of the chiller at given inlet conditions. The preliminary model follows the experimental chilled water data closely, and more experimental results will be compared to the model for validation. The purpose of this model is to be used to determine the performance of an adsorption chiller when simulated with a house model located in Canada.