Experimental Evaluation of Thermal Performance of Solar Assisted Air Conditioning System under Iraq Climate

Abstract

In Iraq most of the small buildings deployed a conventional air conditioning technology which typically uses electrically driven compressor systems which exhibits several clear disadvantages such as high energy consumption, high electricity peak loads demand. Because of the high energy cost, the decrease of fossil fuel resources, the utilization of low level renewable energy sources such as solar energy in refrigeration systems has become a way to address these problems. So a thermal performance of air conditioning system combined with a solar collector is investigated experimentally. The hybrid air conditioner consists of a semi hermetic compressor, water cooled shell and tube condenser, thermal expansion valve and coil and tank evaporator. Different experimental tests were conducted by varying the controlling parameters to investigate their effects on the thermal performance of the solar assisted air-conditioning .The parameters are cooling water flow rate, evaporator water temperature, ambient temperature, refrigerant mass flow rate, storage tank water temperature, and solar radiation intensity under meteorological condition of Baghdad in summer 2015. Results showed that the compressor power consumption was decreased from 1.2 kW at collector heat gain 0.543 kW and solar radiation 572 W/m2 to 0.9 kW at heat gain 0.831 kW and solar radiation 725 W/m2, this leads to increase in COP from 2.493 to 2.725. A comparison between the present experimental work and the other works showed a similar behavior. Result shows an average energy saving of power consumption is about between 23% and 32%.

Keywords: solar assisted air conditioning system, solar collector, thermal performance.