Development of a solar assisted high efficiency single/double effect absorption air conditioning system.

In order to expand use of solar heat, the authors have been developing a high efficiency solar heat driven cooling system. Also the authors have been conducting long term demonstration tests about a commercial air conditioning system that uses solar energy produced by different three type solar collectors as a heat source of an absorption air conditioning system. As a result, it was demonstrated that the COP in case of combined operation by solar energy and natural gas (exactly city gas) becomes 20 to 40 percent higher than that case of another operation modes. Also, seasonal performances of the system were calculated based on the appearance frequency of the outdoor temperature. Furthermore, in order to obtain mean COP during the air conditioning period, the air conditioning load ratio was sorted by appearance frequency of outdoor temperature. COP takes the maximum value at the air-conditioning load ratio of 30-50% and decreased at both higher and lower air-conditioning load ratios than that.