Review of solar thermal air conditioning technologies

•Provide review of latest development in solar thermal air conditioning technologies.•Provide summary for recent researches on solar absorption cycles.•Provide summary for recent researches on solar adsorption cycles.•Provide summary for recent researches on solar thermomechanical cycles.

Solar cooling is a good example of addressing climate changes. In this paper, we provide overviews for working principles of solar thermally operated cooling technologies and reviews for advancements of such technologies from the most recent publications. Researches of solar absorption cycles investigated new refrigerant–absorbent pairs and various system configurations that could lead to increasing solar fraction and extending the cycle operation. Researches of solar adsorption cycles focused on the development and testing of various adsorbent–refrigerant pairs, improving cycle components, and increasing the system efficiency. For the ejector cycles, many studies focused on using computer models and experimental works to investigate the performance of the ejector and find the key parameters affecting its operation. Although many researches have conducted for solar thermal cooling technologies, their overall efficiencies are lower than that of the vapor compression cycles. Therefore, improving efficiency of solar thermally operated cooling technologies is an essential future research topic.