Performance analysis of a solar cooling plant based on a liquid desiccant evaporative cooler

•Solar cooling allows matching energy demand and solar availability.•A thermally driven desiccant evaporative cooler can exploit solar energy.•Liquid desiccant technology is suited for use in solar cooling.•Solar cooling allows significant primary energy saving.

Summer air conditioning represents a growing market in buildings worldwide, with a significant growth rate observed in European commercial and residential buildings. Available heat driven cooling technologies can be used in combination with solar thermal collectors to reduce the load caused by air conditioning on the electric utilities and to reduce the environmental impact. This work reports a performance analysis of an open cycle solar cooling plant. The plant, installed in Northern Italy, is based on a liquid desiccant evaporative cooler coupled with a solar field. Experimental tests run during summer show average primary energy ratio and primary energy saving index of about 1.6 and 30%, respectively. Though this performance is satisfactorily, the regeneration unit always operated near the lower bound of the nominal temperature range. Therefore, optimization of the solar system design could lead to higher performance.