Model development and validation of a solar cooling plant

This paper describes the dynamic model of a solar cooling plant that has been built for demonstration purposes using market-available technology and has been successfully operational since 2001. The plant uses hot water coming from a field of solar flat collectors which feed a single-effect absorption chiller of 35 kW nominal cooling capacity. The work includes model development based on first principles and model validation with a set of experiments carried out on the real plant. The simulation model has been done in a modular way, and can be adapted to other solar cooling-plants since the main modules (solar field, absorption machine, accumulators and auxiliary heater) can be easily replaced. This simulator is a powerful tool for solar cooling systems both during the design phase, when it can be used for component selection, and also for the development and testing of control strategies.