Abstract
Global warming has led to rising electricity demands due to soaring cooling load, resulting in different technologies being implemented with renewable energy options. Renewable energy has been used to partially or fully operate these cooing systems through different technology routes in both conventional and hybrid modes. The feasibility of a particular cooling process is influenced by several technological, economic, environmental and other related factors. Selection of the appropriate route also requires consideration of external factors such as local weather, cooling load requirements and the potential of possible renewable energy. Multi-criteria decision analysis is a useful tool to systematically arrive at the right option from several possible options. This tool is used to assess the feasibility of eight technology routes for three different climatic conditions. Other than the direct cooling processes, two routes of renewable energy utilization, namely, the solar photovoltaic system and solar thermal system, are considered. The normalized decision matrix is established and weighted decision matrix is estimated, and the best solution and the worst solution values are obtained by using equations. This study is performed for three climatic zones under the Koppen classification, namely, the tropical maritime arid condition with average midday temperature from 40 to 45 °C, with two different relative humidity ranges, namely, dry area and maritime area. Additionally, the temperate continental climatic zone is analyzed for comparison. The results of this study will help decision makers to judiciously implement air conditioning systems in the above climatic zones. The distance of each waste treatment strategy from the overall best alternative treatment strategy and the overall worst alternative treatment strategy is obtained. Finally, the cooling strategies are ranked for the best option for the cooling mechanism to be adopted for the three climatic conditions.
Highlights
Building energy consumption for room cooling systems plays a predominant role in the energy economics of a country
The ozone layer depletion potential (ODP) as well as the global warming potential (GWP) due to refrigerants that are used in the cooling machines are taken from literature and used in the analysis [13]
Absorption refrigeration system running on diesel oil as represented by VA1 has further reduced carbon dioxide emission because of the direct firing
Summary
Building energy consumption for room cooling systems plays a predominant role in the energy economics of a country. The energy performance of these systems are primarily determined by the evaporator and condenser operating parameters. Vapor compression cooling technology continues to play a major role in spite of high energy consumption due to the advantages of high coefficient of performance, lower cooling temperature achievement and high condenser temperature endurance [1]. Vapor absorption cooling and thermo-electric cooling has recently reduced the prominence of vapor compression systems by replacing them for many cooling requirements. Evaporative cooling is limited to the achievable wet bulb temperature in a region and is suitable only for low humidity weather conditions. Vapor absorption cooling technology is being adopted on a large scale with the use of different heating sources, renewable as well as non-renewable, for supplying heat to the vapor generator. Thermo-electric cooling is used for localized cooling of electronic equipment
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