IEA Solar Heating and Cooling Programm - NachhaltigWirtschaften.at

IEA SHC Task 38 Solar Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Subtask A Report, November 2009
3 Thermally Driven Chillers
By Tomas Núňez, Fraunhofer ISE, Germany
A survey of small capacity thermally driven chillers was carried out in the frame of the
PolySMART project. The intention of the survey was to assess the present developments in
the field taking into account laboratory developments, prototypes, small series products and
commercially available machines. The survey was limited to the capacity range of about 70
kW cooling power. A total of 34 developments have been registered. The majority of the
surveyed machines were prototypes that have been modified and changed in the last three
years. Some developments were discontinued or are no longer available. In the tables below
an extraction of the survey is presented. The criteria for this extraction are:
• The machine should be available as commercial product, as a small series product
or a small series product is to be expected in short time
• The chilling power is up to 30 kW
• Performance data is available.
The machines are classified according to the technology: adsorption systems, including the
pairs water / silica gel and water / zeolite, absorption systems with the working pairs
ammonia / water and water / lithium-bromide and other technologies which include jet cycles
and a three-phase Water / Lithium-chloride absorption chiller. This last chiller is also a
thermo-chemical store for heat and cold and therefore a different technology.
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