Solar Thermal Polygeneration System for Cooling, Fresh Water, and Domestic Hot Water Supply: Experimental Analysis

Abstract

The demands for space air-conditioning and clean drinking water are relatively high in Middle East countries. A sustainable and innovative approach to meet these demands along with the production of domestic hot water is discussed in this chapter. A solar thermal polygeneration (STP) system is designed and developed for the production of chilled water for air-conditioning using absorption chiller, pure water with membrane distiller, and domestic hot water by heat recovery. The STP system has four major components: (i) evacuated tube collector field, (ii) 10TR absorption chiller, (iii) air-gap membrane distillation units, and (iv) heat exchangers integrated together to operate in four different modes for complete solar cooling, cogeneration of pure water and domestic hot water, trigeneration of cooling, pure water and domestic hot water, and cogeneration of cooling and pure water. Experiments on different modes and the analyzed results show the advantages of combined operation through effective utilization of heat lost in the process operation.