Abstract— The main aim of this study is to report the performance evaluation as well as the gained operational experiences of a solar- driven cooling plant after 5 years in operation, in addition, based on the gained experiences, a suggestion for an appropriate small- scale solar-driven cooling plant for hot arid areas. The plant performance results indicate: instead small solar energy values at the plant location, the daily solar fraction ranged from 0.33 to 0.41, and for the duration from August 2002 to November 2007 the total solar energy supplied to the chiller is 53914 kWh and the total external energy (gas energy) supplied to the chiller is 35249 kWh and their percentage are about 60% and 40%, respectively. The collectors' filed instantaneous mean efficiency value is about 0.63, the monthly average value varies from 34.1 % up to 41.8 %, with a five-year average value of 28.3 %, respectively and the daily chiller COP varies from 0.37 to 0.81, respectively. The gained from the operational experiences are: in hot arid areas, the water normally is rare, thus the re-cooling system should be designed based on dry re-cooling techniques. Moreover, based on the total initial capital cost of the entire solar cooling system, adsorption- cooling technology for small-scale solar-driven air-conditioning systems is the most appropriate. This is because these chillers can be driven by a low temperature energy source that can be obtained from flat plate collectors where, costs are a bit lower for flat plate collectors with liquid heat transfer carrier. Keywords—Solar cooling; Absorption chillers; Lithium bromide- water; operational experiences
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