Central air conditioning based on adsorption and solar energy

This paper presents the characterization and the pre-dimensioning of an adsorption chiller as part of a 20 kW air conditioning central unit for cooling a set of rooms that comprises an area of 110 m2. The system is basically made up of a cold water storage tank supplied by an activated carbon–methanol adsorption chiller, a hot water storage tank, fed by solar energy and natural gas, and a fan-coil. During an acclimatization of 8 h (9–17 h), the following parameters were obtained for dimensioning the cooling system: 504 kg of activated carbon, 180 L of methanol, 7000 L of hot water, 10,300 L of cold water with its temperature varying in the fan-coil from 1 °C to 14 °C. Considering the mean value of the total daily irradiation in João Pessoa (7°8′S, 34°50′WG), and a cover of regenerating heat supplied by solar energy equivalent to 70%, the adsorption chiller’s expected coefficient of performance (COP) was found to be around 0.6.