Development and Application of Solar Absorption Air-conditioner

Thermal utilization of solar for air-conditioning is a particularly attractive application for solar energy because of the near coincidence of peak cooling loads with the available solar power, and has great meaning to energy saving and environment protecting. Among the various technologies for application, the absorption system appears to be one of the most suitable and promising options for solar cooling, because they are compact, reliable and can be easily integrated into existing systems. This paper introduced the theory, development and character of solar absorption air-conditioning system and its application in the BAPP project of Carnegie Mellon University and Solar Technique application demonstration project of Beijing. Success of these projects approve that solar absorption air-conditioner is feasible technically, and has good economic and environmental benefit. Nevertheless, further improvements should be made to the solar powered air-conditioning systems. Although solar powered air-conditioning systems are readily available in commercial sizes, existing solar cooling systems are not competitive with conventional electricity-driven or gas-fired air-conditioning systems because of their high first cost. Lowering the cost of components and improving their performance could reduce the cost of solar cooling systems. Improvements such as reduced collector area, because of improved system performance, and reduced collector cost will lower the cost of solar components.