Simulation of a solar absorption cooling system

During the last years there is an increased consciousnessof the environmental problems, which are created by the use of fossil fuels for electrical power generation consumed by converting cooling systems. In addition, the use of common working fluids (refrigerants), with their ozone-depleting and global warming potential, has become a serious environmental problem. This underlinesthe need to implement advanced, new concepts in building air-conditioning.The most common, globally, type of thermally driven technology to produce chilled water is absorption cooling.For air-conditioning applications, absorption systemscommonly use the water/lithium bromide or water/ammonia working pair.In this paper, the performance and economic evaluation of a solar heating and cooling system is studied using the transient simulation program (TRNSYS). The meteorologicalyear file exploited the hourly weather data where produced by 30-year statistical process. The requireddata were obtained by Hellenic National MeteorologicalService.The water heating, space heating, and the cooling load of a municipal building in N. Kazantzakis municipality in Crete were considered. The exploitation of the results of the simulation provided the optimum sizing of the system.