Design of a solar absorption cooling system in a Greek hospital

Air conditioning of buildings is responsible for a large percentage of the greenhouse and ozone depletion effect, as refrigerant harmful gases are released into the atmosphere from conventional cooling systems. The need to implement advanced new concepts in building air conditioning systems is more crucial than ever today. Solar cooling systems (SCS) have the advantage of using absolutely harmless working fluids such as water, or solutions of certain salts. They are energy efficient and environmentally safe. They can be used, either as stand-alone systems or with conventional AC, to improve the indoor air quality of all types of buildings. The main goal is to utilize "zero emissions" technologies to reduce energy consumption and reduce CO₂ emissions. Amongst cooling technologies, absorption cooling seems to have a promising market potential. In this paper, the performance and economic evaluation of a solar heating and cooling system of a hospital in Crete, is studied using the transient simulation program (TRNSYS). The meteorological year file exploited the hourly weather data where produced by 30-year statistical process. The required data were obtained by Hellenic National Meteorological Service. The objective of this study is to simulate a complete system comprised of a solar collector, a storage tank, a backup heat source, a water cooling tower and a LiBr-H₂O absorption chiller. The exploitation of the results of the simulation provided the optimum sizing of the system.