Thermo-economic analysis and multi-objective optimization of absorption cooling system driven by various solar collectors

This research presents a combination of thermo-economic analysis and multi-objective optimization of a 10 kW single-effect ammonia-water solar absorption cooling system. A thermodynamic model is derived, and energy-exergy analyses are conducted. Also, the effects of various solar collector types including a flat plate, evacuated tube, compound parabolic, and parabolic trough collectors on the system performance are examined at different ambient temperatures. The thermodynamic analysis indicates that by increasing heat source temperature, the coefficient of performance and exergy efficiency of the system reach their highest values, while they occur in lower heat source temperature as the ambient temperature is decreased. The exergy efficiency is also found to decrease with the increment of evaporator, absorber, and condenser absorber temperatures. Furthermore, for determining the optimum operating conditions, a multi-objective optimization is performed by using an efficient particle swarm optimization technique with five objective functions. The corresponding results reveal that the solar absorption cooling system with evacuated tube collectors is the most economical solution with a total cost of 7.2 k€ and 24 m2 collector area. It is found that the parabolic trough collector system has the highest solar exergy efficiency of 0.046, which occurs at the high ambient temperature and low evaporator temperature. This system also has higher solar performance coefficient up to 0.447 indicating its great efficiency.