J. R.

Adhikari et al: Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building

Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building
Jhalak Raj Adhikari*, Bivek Baral, Ram Lama, Badri Aryal, and Roshan Khadka Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kathmandu University, Nepal
Abstract- Cooling system, for cooling purpose, is generally felt essential during the summer days due to large solar radiation. This causes the greatest need for cooling and at the same time, maximum possible solar energy is also available. The paper covers the need and importance of solar based cooling system that can play a very prominent role in attenuating energy crisis by the use of solar energy. The study investigated and evaluated the feasibility of an absorption refrigeration unit on solar power. The system designed here functions with the principle of absorption refrigeration cycle having water as a refrigerant and Lithium Bromide as an absorbent. The cooling load for the office building is 5 KW. The designed absorption system has 0.77 average coefficient of thermal performance (COP). For this design, we also analyze the effect of COP in the variation of the refrigeration mass flow rate () and generator temperature (Tg). The ultimate goal in the long term would ideally be to reduce the consumption of electricity used for refrigeration and air conditioning, hence saving money and reducing the stress on our electricity generation and distribution networks.1 Index Terms- Absorbent, coefficient of thermal performance, consumption of electricity, cooling load, Lithium Bromide, refrigerant, summer days, water Symbols, Abbreviations and Subscripts:
T W O F O C A BTU CLF E EES ES CLTD COP h KJ KPa KW KWh Temperature difference Change in humidity Degree Fahrenheit Degree Celsius Area British Thermal Unit Cooling Load Factor East Engineering Equation Solver East South Cooling Load Temperature difference Coefficient of Performance Enthalpy (kJ/kg) Kilo Joule Kilo Pascal Kilo Watt Kilo Watt hour NE NW N SC SHGF SW Q U W x Sq. 1, 2, 3 a c e g Mass flow rate North East North West North Shading Coefficient Solar Heat Gain Factor South West Heat energy Overall heat transfer coefficient Mass flow (kg/s) Concentration of lithium bromide Square Systems point designation Absorber Condenser Evaporator Generator

source of energy must be found to meet energy supply of high energy consumption sector. The building is one of the prominent sectors, which could save tremendous amount of fossil fuels if renewable energy sources like solar cooling substrates them. As the solar energy is advantageous from energy, environment and sustainability point of view, efforts should focus on to develop an efficient absorption cooling system. Thermodynamic analysis of the system would produce scientific results help us to evaluate and optimize the system. According to American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) Air cooling(conditioning) is the process of treating air so as to control simultaneously its temperature, humidity, cleanliness and distribution to meet the requirement of the conditioned space. Cooling may be defined as the process of achieving and maintaining a temperature below that of the surroundings, the aim being to cool some product or space to the required temperature. Air conditioning is one of the most widely researched applications, resulting from the potential reduction of carbon emission and the reduction of electricity consumption peaks. The commonly used refrigeration process today is the vapor compression system. The basic system consists of an evaporator, a compressor, a condenser and an expansion valve. Schematic Diagram of Vapor compression System is shown in figure 1. The refrigeration effect is obtained in the cold region as the heat is absorbed by the vaporization of refrigerant in the evaporator. The refrigerant vapor from the evaporator is compressed in the compressor to a high pressure at which its saturation temperature is greater than the ambient or any other heat sink. Hence when the high pressure and high temperature refrigerant flows through the condenser, condensation of the vapor into liquid takes place by heat rejection to the heat sink. To complete the cycle, the high pressure liquid is made to flow through an expansion valve. In the expansion valve, the pressure and the temperature of the refrigerant are decreasing. This low pressure and low temperature refrigerant vapor evaporates in the evaporator taking heat from the cold region. It should be observed that the system operates on a closed cycle. The system requires input in the form of mechanical work. It extracts heat from a cold space and rejects heat to a high temperature heat sink. The problems associated with the commercial air cooling system are high consumption of high grade energy i.e. electricity and due to releasing of CFCs it doesnt seem environment friendly. Our main objective is to design an air cooling system based on solar absorption refrigeration principle.

I. INTRODUCTION
The demands for air cooling system in household, offices, hotels, laboratories or public buildings are increasing considerably. Under adequate conditions, solar and solar-assisted air cooling systems can be reasonable alternatives to conventional air cooling systems. The use of energy in the building sector for heating and cooling is nearly one- third of the total energy consumed in the world [1]. As there is growing concern in the fossil fuels which is depleted soon and due to sustainability issue, an alternative * Corresponding author, jhalakad@gmail.com Rentech Symposium Compendium, Volume 2, December 2012

22

J. R. Adhikari et al: Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building

vaporize at a cold enough temperature to produce chilled water. This water vapor is absorbed by the concentrated lithium bromide solution due to its hygroscopic characteristics. The heat of vaporization and the heat of solution are removed using cooling water at this step. The solution is then pumped to the concentrator at a higher pressure where heat is applied (using steam or hot water) to drive off the water and thereby re-concentrate the lithium bromide. The water driven off by the heat input step is then condensed collected, and then flashed to the required low temperature to complete the cycle. Since water is moving the heat from the evaporator to the condenser, it serves as the refrigerant in this cycle. There are also absorption chillers in use that use ammonia as the refrigerant in the same cycle. The absorbent is the material that is used to maintain the concentration difference in the machine. Most commercial absorption chillers use lithium bromide. Lithium bromide has a very high affinity for water, is relatively inexpensive and non-toxic. However, it can be highly corrosive and disposal is closely controlled. Water of course is extremely low cost and safety simply isn't an issue.

Fig. 1: Schematic diagram of vapor compression system [3]

The working principle of an absorption system is similar to that of a mechanical compression system with respect to the key system components evaporator and condenser. A vaporizing liquid extracts heat at a low temperature (cold production). The vapor is compressed to a higher pressure and condensed at higher temperature (heat rejection). The compression of the vapor is accomplished by means of a thermally driven compressor consisting of the two main components absorber and generator. Subsequently, the pressure of the liquid is reduced by expansion through a throttle valve and the cycle is repeated. Absorption cycles are based on the fact that boiling point of a mixture is higher than corresponding boiling point of pure liquid [4].A simple schematic diagram for absorption system is shown in figure 2. In this figure Qg and Qa represent the heat given in to the generator and heat release from the absorber.

II. THERMODYNAMIC ANALYSIS

This paper focus on the thermal analysis of the system and its performance in pre assumed temperature of the evaporator and condenser. The temperature of the evaporator and the condenser assumed to be 10oC and 40oC respectively. The thermal analysis depends on the basic governing equation of thermodynamics. Moreover, the analysis has been based on simulation work on Engineering Equation Solver (EES). In developing the model the following basic assumptions have been made. There are no kinetic and potential energy effects and there is no chemical or nuclear reaction. All processes are steady state and steady flow. The system surrounding is considered as large thermal reservoir and no influence of local activity of source or sink. The refrigerant-absorbent are considered to be ideal. No pressure changes except through the flow restrictors and the pump. Pump is isentropic.

Fig. 2: Basic vapor absorption system [3]

Lithium bromide is the most common absorbent used in commercial cooling equipment, with water used as the refrigerant. Smaller absorption chillers sometimes use water as the absorbent and ammonia as the refrigerant. The absorption chillers must operate at very low pressures (about l/l00th of normal atmospheric pressure) for the water to Rentech Symposium Compendium, Volume 2, December 2012

An absorption air conditioner or refrigerator does not use an electric compressor to mechanically pressurize the refrigerant. Instead, the absorption device uses a heat source, such as natural gas, solar heated water or geothermal heated water to evaporate the already-pressurized refrigerant from an absorbent/refrigerant mixture. This takes place in a device called the vapor generator. Although absorption coolers require electricity for pumping the refrigerant, the amount is small compared to that consumed by a compressor in a conventional electric air conditioner or refrigerator. The coefficient of performance of this refrigerating machine with absorption system is defined as follows: COP = qe /qg (1) 23

J. R. Adhikari et al: Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building

For the analysis, we will have to establish the mass and energy balance equations for the various elements of the refrigerating cycle. The total mass flow rate through the pump is assumed to be 0.6 kg/s as shown in figure 3. General mass balance equation in the generator: nerator: w3 + w5 =w2 Mass balance of the refrigerants i.e. water vapor: w5 = w6 = w7 Lithium bromide mass balance (2) (3)

w3x3= w2x2 Heat added to the generator qg= w5h5+w3h3 w2h2 Heat rejected through the absorber qa = w7h7 + w4h4 - w1h1 Heat rejected through the condenser qc = w5h5 w6h6

(4) (5) (6) (7)

Heat is to be given in the evaporator; qe is calculated from the cooling load calculation.

Fig. 3: Schematic diagram absorption system with reference temperature of different components [2]

III. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION

Sunny summer days are beautiful, yet in the office a hot day can be altogether stressful. Because productivity can suffer under such conditions, more and more buildings are being fitted with air-conditioning conditioning systems. This is where solar air conditioning comes in: As the amount of solar air conditioning consumer is increasing air conditioning industry with ith several challenges. Among these are demands for increased energy efficiency and improved indoor air quality, growing concern for improved comfort and environmental control, increased ventilation requirements, phase-out out of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), and an rising peak demand charges. As a result, new approaches to air conditioning are being evaluated to resolve these economic, environmental, and regulatory issues. Since this study is focused on air cooling system in the office building operated by the solar r absorption system. We have chosen the staff room nearby bio-gas gas equipped room as our basis for calculating load as shown in figure 4. Cooling load is the rate at which heat must be removed from the space to maintain room air temperature at a constant value. val The different load from the office ffice building are exfiltration, transmission, internal load, , solar and infiltration as soon figure 5 are consider for cooling load calculation. For the cooling load calculation different load like conduction from roof, wall and nd floor, air exchange from gap, heat loss from people and heat release from equipment should be consider as shown in figure 6.

Fig. 4: Reference office building

Fig. 5: Different ifferent losses from the building

Rentech Symposium Compendium, Volume 2, 2 December 2012

24

J. R. Adhikari et al: Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building

The temperature difference between the ambient and the room is the major parameter for the cooling load. A man body feels comfortable thermodynamically when the heat produced by the metabolism of the human body is equal to the sum of the heat dissipated to the surroundings surrounding and the heat stored in human body by raising the temperature of body tissues [5]. The inside temperature of the room for human comfort is assumed to be 22oC.The maximum and average outdoor temperature are as soon in the table IV.
TABLE IV TEMPERATURE FOR THE BUILDING

Fig. 6: Terms in cooling load calculation

The cooling load are depends upon the specification of the office building. The table I shows the dimensions and direction of the components of the room. The overall heat transfer coefficient is depends upon the materials of the wall and the table II shows materials and direction of the roof and the four walls.
TABLE I SPECIFICATION OF OFFICE CE BUILDING

The solar radiation in the building is also depends on the elevation, latitude and longitude of the building. Elevation of Dhulikhel from sea level is 5500 ft and latitude and longitude are 27.42N and 85.19E respectively. respectively

IV. MODEL ANALYSIS AND SIMULATION

The overall heat transfer coefficient and other parameter for the cooling load calculation of the different components of the building are taken from the ASHRAE Fundamentals Handbook of HVAC of 1997 edition. edition
TABLE II MATERIALS AND DIRECTION ON OF THE ROOF AND FOUR F WALLS

1. Cooling Load Calculation ion 1.1Transmission from Walls, Floor and Roof Heat gain through walls, floors, ceilings, and doors is caused by the air temperature difference across such surfaces and solar gains incident on the surfaces. Cooling load can be estimated by using following formula, Q=U*A*CLTD (8) a) Roof Load The roof of the building is medium colour tin. From the ASHRAE hand book of HVAC the overall heat transfer of the roof (Uroof) is 0.23 btu/hr.sq.ft.0F. And the area of the roof is 480 sq. ft. The cooling load temperature difference of the room (CLTDroof) is calculated to be 78.80F. b) Floor Load Since the floor of the building is made of up medium cement. For this specification overall heat transfer (Ufloor) of the floor is 0.213 btu/hr.sq.ft.0F. The temperature difference between floor and cooling space is 150F. c) Wall Load The wall of the building is medium face brick with one side plaster. The overall heat transfer coefficient, area and CLTD of the four walls are listed in the table 4. 1.2 Transmission ssion from Glass Glass is the major material of most of the building, provides the most direct route for entry of the solar radiation.

The sensible and latent heat gains due to occupants, lights, appliances etc. within the conditioned space are the internal heat load and the internal load and their numbers are shown in Table III.
TABLE III ITEMS FOR INTERNAL LOAD LO

Rentech Symposium Compendium, Volume 2, December 2012

25

J. R. Adhikari et al: Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building

There are two types of heat admission into the room i.e. conduction and solar heat gain.
TABLE V SPECIFICATION OF THE FOUR WALLS

Direction NE NW SW ES

U,btu/hr.sq.ft.0F 2.61 2.69 2.69 2.69

Area(sq.ft) 66 200 84 200

CLTD.(0F) 13.7 16.8 19.3 13.7

The amount of heat gain in the space due to lighting depends upon the wattage and used hours. There are two florescent lighting. c) Appliance Since in the room there are two personal computer and one impact printer. The heat gain, used hour and CLF of the appliance are shown in the table 7. Total thermal Load is the sum of all above mentioned load. The total cooling load of this room is listed in the table 8. From this calculation, total thermal load is 17051Btu/hr. Thus total thermal cooling load in the cycle is calculated to be 5KW.
TABLE VIII THE HEAT GAIN, USED HOUR AND CLF OF THE APPLIANCE

a) Conduction Heat Gain The conduction from the wall is depends on the overall heat transfer coefficient, CLTD and area of the glass which are listed in the table VI.
TABLE VI OVERALL HEAT TRANSFER COEFFICIENT AND CLTD OF THE
WINDOWS

Applianc e

Numbe r

Heat gain(Btu/hr )

Use d hour

Coolin g load factor (CLF) 0.72 0.72

Direction NE WS

U(btu/hr.sq.ft.oF) 0.0554 0.0554

Area(sq.ft.) 16 16

CLTD(0F) 65.4 13.7

Personal computer Impact printer

2 1

432 67

6 0.5

b) Solar Heat Gain Cooling The direct heat gain from the glass is the function of the shading coefficient, solar heat gain factor and Cooling load factor which are listed in the table VII.
TABLE VII SHADING COEFFICIENT, COOLING LOAD FACTOR AND SOLAR HEAT
GAIN FACTOR

Shading coefficient(sc)

Area (sq.ft.)

Cooling load factor (clf)

Solar heat gain factor (SHGF)[btu/hr.sq ft]

0.92 0.92

16 16

0.21 0.28

51.5 51.5

TABLE IX THE HEAT GAIN, USED HOUR AND CLF OF THE APPLIANCE Compone Equation for heat transfer Q( Q (W) nts of Btu/hr) room Roof Q=U*A*CLTD(adj) 3621.0 1061.3 walls Q=U*A*CLTD(adj) 8725.0 2557.2 Glass Q=U*A*CLTD(adj) 70.1 20.5 Solar Q=A*SC*SHGF*CLF 371.5 108.9 Floor Q=U*A*T 2210.0 647.7 Internal light Q=INPUT*CLF 262.6 77.0 Q=numb.(Sense People H.G.*LatentH.G.*CLF) 734.4 215.2 Appliance Q=numb.*heat gain*CLF 670.3 196.5 Ventilatio n and infiltratio Sensible,Qs=1.1*cfm*T,latent n =4840*cfm*W 386.1 113.2 17051.0 4997.4 Total Q

1.3 Infiltration and Ventilation Cubic feet per (cfm) per person are assumed to be for the office building 15. Both latent and sensible heat must be count for the infiltration. Because of entry of outside air into the space influences both the air temperature and humidity level in the space. 1.4 Internal Loads The primary sources of internal heat gain are lights, occupants and equipments operating within the space. a) Occupants Load The number of person assumed to be two who are seating and computer typing. Both sensible and latent heat must be accounts for cooling load calculation. For this case CLF is taken to be 0.77. Sensible and latent head are 255 Btu/Hr per person and 100 Btu/Hr per person respectively. b) Lighting Loads Rentech Symposium Compendium, Volume 2, December 2012

2. Absorption System Analysis The computation of mass flow rate incorporates material balances using applicable concentrations of LiBr in the solution. Since saturation condition prevails in the condenser in the generator and condenser temperature 40 oC fixes the pressure in condenser (or in generator) 7.38 kPa.From similar reasoning, the evaporator temperature of 10 oC establishes the low pressure at 1.23 kPa.The p-x-t diagram display the state points of the LiBr solution. From the graph p-x-t diagram X1=0.5(30oC & 1.23 kPa) X2=0.664(100oC & 7.38 kPa) Heat given in the evaporator qe is 5 kW, which is taken from cooling load calculation. 26

J. R. Adhikari et al: Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building

From the h-x-t graph of LiBr water solutions, enthalpy at different stand point are h1 = -168 kJ/kg; h3=-52kJ/kg; 52kJ/kg; h6=167.5kJ/kg and h7=2520kJ/kg. h5= h5=2676kJ/kg;

From energy and mass balance equation which are given in the equation (2) to (7): qc = 5.33 kW qg = 6.46 kW qa = 6.04 kW Hence coefficient of the performance of absorption system is given by, COP = qe /qg = 0.77 Hence, the coefficient of the system is 0.77. 3. Solar panel The maximum solar radiation for Dhulikhel is 5.5 kWh/ m2/day i.e. 0.81 W/m2/s. Since from absorption system analysis, qg was found to be 6.46 kW. The total area of the panel is calculated to be 8 m2 in the peak load. If the solar radiation is decreases, there is also cooling load decreases. Hence the system is balances by itself.

Thus for the fixed evaporator load, there is no significance of higher heat added to the generator. This inverse relation lation in the graph is due to the relation COP = qe /qg . It is obvious that if the generator heat (qg) is increased and the evaporator heat (qe) is kept constant, then the value obtained from the ratio get decrease, i.e. system COP decreases and vice versa.

Fig. 8: Plot between generator heat and COP

V. SIMULATION AND RESULTS

We use EES for the simulation of this system. The first of all the governing equation of the absorption system are coded the equation window (terminology of EES) of this software. Then for the analysis different parameter such as mass flow rate, temperature e of the generator, heat added to the generator etc. are varies and the COP of the system is plotted. The simple architecture of the absorption system is shown in the figure 7. This figure 8 shows that, with the increasing value of heat added to the generator, the COP of the system goes on decreasing. This shows that the COP of the system has inverse relation to heat added to the system.

The COP of the system is decrease on increasing generator heat; it is based on fact that a higher amount of water was separated from the ammonia-water ammonia solution and thus more solution had to be circulated so as to maintain the refrigerant. Similarly, the COP of the system has inverse relation with the generator temperature (Tg). It shows that for increasing generator temperature the COP gets decrease and vice versa as shown in figure 9. The generator temperature temperat increases, which is due to increase of generator heat and hence COP decreases for fixed cooling load.

Rentech Symposium Compendium, Volume 2, December 2012

27

J. R. Adhikari et al: Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building

Fig. 7: Architecture of absorption system using EES

The figure 10 shows that on increasing mass flow rate of refrigerant and absorbent mixture, the both heat added to the generator and heat at the evaporator increases. Also, the distance between two graphs is increases on increasing mass flow rate of refrigerants. In other words, while increasing the mass flow rate of the refrigerant the heat taking capacity of the refrigerant from the conditioned area get increases. That results the high reduction in temperature of the conditioned area. However the COP of the system is decreases due to increasing distance between two lines of qg and qe. The relation between mass flow rate and COP is shown in figure 11. On the increasing temperature cooling effect increases it is because of increasing mass flow rate of the refrigerants i.e. water vapor.
Fig. 9: Plot between generator temperature (Tg) and COP (at constant mass flow rate)

Fig. 11: Plot between the mass flow rate of refrigerant and the COP Fig. 10: Plot between mass flow rate and evaporator heat and generator heat

VI. CONCLUSION
A design and simulation of absorption air cooling system using solar as source of energy, for an office building was

Rentech Symposium Compendium, Volume 2, December 2012

28

J. R. Adhikari et al: Design and analysis of solar absorption air cooling system for an office building

done and the system performances were analyzed parametrically by using EES. It appears that best performance in terms of COP would be obtained when we work with low generator temperature and low generator heat. The cooling load for our system is obtained as 5kw. The COP of the System is 0.77. Solar collector area to conduct system is 8 m2. On the increase of mass flow rate of refrigerant, the overall cooling effect increases, but COP decreases. This absorption air cooling system is alternative to conventional vapor compression cycle. Here, Lithium bromide has been selected as absorbent for cooling purpose and water as refrigerant. The ultimate goal in the long term would ideally be to reduce the consumption of electricity used for refrigeration and air conditioning.

Badri Aryal has done BE in mechanical engineering from Kathmandu University. He is working in particle method at ENT, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Roshan Khadka has done BE in mechanical engineering from Kathmandu University. He has done internship in sand erosion at TTL, Kathmandu University.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The author acknowledge to Asst. Prof. Sunil Prasad Lohani for his invaluable support and continuous encouragement to conduct this project. They also express gratitude to Mr. Suman Aryal who has played a pivotal role to conduct this project, share his precious idea and guide them. They also voice their appreciation to Mr. Shiva Poudel for diligent guidance on cooling load calculation. Lastly, they thank the Mechanical Engineering Department, Kathmandu University for its support and co-operation. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] Energy conservation in building and community systems (ECBCS). Viewed 21.11.2012, http://www.ecbcs.org/home.htm. Refrigeration and Air conditioning, W.F. Stoecker, J.W. Jones, second edition , p. 337 History of Refrigeration, http://nptel.iitm.ac.in/courses/Webcourse contents/IIT%20Kharagpur/ Ref%20and%20Air%20Cond/pdf/RAC%20%20Lecture%201.pdf, viewed on 14th June, 2010. Henning,Dr Hans-Martin, Air Conditioning with Solar Energy, Fraunhofer-Institut fr Solare Energiesysteme ISE, Freiburg. SERVITEC; Barcelona, October 3, 2000. Refrigeration and Air-conditioning, R. k. Rajputh, First Eddition 2004, p.515

[4]

[5]

BIOGRAPHIES
Jhalak Raj Adhikari has done BE in Mechanical Engineering from Kathmandu University. Currently, he is the researcher in Renewable Nepal project on High rate anaerobic digester for biogas production from waste water treatment at the department of mechanical engineering, Kathmandu University. Dr Bivek Baral has done PhD from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering. He is completed Master in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Tokyo, Japan. Currently, he is the Assistant Professor at the department of Mechanical Engineering, Kathmandu University. Ram Lama has don BE in mechanical engineering from Kathmandu University. He has done internship in particle method at ENT, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Rentech Symposium Compendium, Volume 2, December 2012

29