Development of the Solar Cooling in Mediterranean Area

Cooling demand is rapidly increasing in many parts of the world, especially in moderate climates, such as in most EU. member states. This leads to a dramatic increase of electricity demand on summer season, which causes an unwanted use up of fossil fuel and furthermore an instability of electricity gridsDemand Reduction is therefore the key to ensure the sustainability of energy supply, making existing buildings more efficient and new buildings with optimum energy demands. As many cooling applications, such as air conditioning, have a high coincidence with the availability of solar irradiation, the combination of solar thermal and cooling obviously has a high potential to reduce the electricity consumption of conventional air conditioning. Using solar thermal energy is an interesting option for heat-driven air conditioning: e.g. desiccant cooling, absorption chillers. In this paper, the autonomous operations both of a solar desiccant cooling plant and absorption chillers powered by direct-flow vacuum-tube collectors are investigated. The overall cooling efficiency of the two system is evaluated using simulation for humid and moderately humid climates, the overall cooling efficiency is studied and finally the overall efficiency of the collectors is calculated for the studied cases. It is found that the proposed system can lead to significant electricity consumption reductions