Experimental Research and Performance Analysis of a Solar-Powered Air-conditioning System in a Green Building

Abstract

Based on the green building of the Shanghai Institute of Architectural Science, a solar-powered adsorption air-conditioning system was designed. The operational performance under a typical operating mode in summer was studied, which includes temperature variations of solar collector arrays, heat storage tank and adsorption chillers as well as refrigerating output variations of the system. Experimental results show that adsorption chillers have the advantages of low driving temperature, stability and long working time with high efficiency. Under representative working conditions in summer, the average refrigerating output of solar powered air-conditioning system is 15.31kW during operation of 8 hours; moreover, the maximum attains 20kW. Correspondingly, the average system COP is 0.35, and the average solar COP is 0.15. The solar fraction in summer is concluded to be 71.73%. In addition, the variations of solar-powered air-conditioning system performance with ambient parameters (solar radiant intensity and ambient temperature) and operating parameters (temperatures and flow rates) are analyzed.