Solar- or Gas-Driven Absorption System for Cooling and Heating in a Hotel

Abstract

Absorption cooling systems are able to utilize both gas burner and solar collector as the heat source. The gas-driven absorption cooling can work in the double-effect configuration with high efficiency. It is stable but has high gas consumption. The solar hot water-driven absorption cooling usually adopts the single-effect configuration. It is clean and energy saving but hard to work continuously. In this chapter, a LiBr-water absorption chiller that can be driven by both gas firing and solar hot water is introduced. The chiller combines both single-effect solar absorption cooling and double-effect gas absorption cooling. The solar-driven part of the chiller works first. The gas-driven part of the chiller is activated when the solar hot water temperature is not high enough or the cooling output is insufficient. In this way, the utilizations of both heat sources can be optimized. A cooling and heating system in a hotel was built based on this chiller. The typical working conditions of this system were tested and analyzed. This combined solar-gas-driven system saved 49.7% of the gas consumption compared with the conventional gas-driven system.