Experimental testing of the performance of a solar absorption cooling system assisted with ice-storage for an office space

Energy storage plays a vital role in shifting cooling energy load from period of peak demand to that of low demand. This paper reports performance data of an ice-storage unit in solar absorption cooling system for cooling an office space. The cooling system consists of ammonia-water absorption chiller, evacuated tube solar collectors and ice-storage. Experiments were carried out on two consecutive days in each of the month of March and October in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The ice-storage unit was charged on the first day and the cool energy discharged on the other day. The results showed average coefficient of performance (COP) of the chiller during charging as 0.43 and 0.47 for the months of March and October, respectively. The results also indicate that the ice-storage can provide a backup time of about 5-6 h, which is sufficient to cool the given space during the early hours of chiller warm-up.