Design and Development of Utilization Factor for Solar Absorption Cooling System

Abstract

One approach to the problem of determining economic solar air conditioning/heating system designs is to use computer simulations directly as a design tool. However, the use of computer simulations to aid in the design of every solar air conditioning/heating application is not satisfactory for those engineers and designers who do not have access to computer facilities. As a result, a simplified design procedure will be required for use by the engineers and designers when dealing with solar air conditioning/heating systems. In this paper a utilization factor which reflects the long term performance of a solar absorption cooling has been defined and developed and then simulation studies are performed to develop a correlation between the utilization factor for cooling and the important parameters of the solar air conditioning system. The result is a simple method requiring only monthly average meteorological data which can be used to estimate the utilization factor for cooling of a solar air conditioning system as a function of the major system design parameters.