Experimental evaluation of a hybrid adsorption-compression cascade chiller for solar cooling applications in industrial processes

The present work reports the experimental evaluation of the performance of a cascade chiller, having an adsorption cycle as topping cycle and a vapour compression cycle as bottoming cycle. An experimental testing campaign was carried out at CNR ITAE, focused on the definition of performance maps of the system under different operating conditions. In particular, heat source temperatures between 70°C and 85°C were evaluated, cooling temperatures between 22°C and 40°C and chilled water temperatures of -12°C up to 5°C, in order to reproduce the operation in different seasons, climates and user requests (i.e. air conditioning and refrigeration). Cooling powers from 18 kW (under air conditioning conditions) from 12 kW (for refrigeration conditions) were obtained for the lower cooling temperatures. Indeed, the cooling temperature has a great influence on the cooling capacity of the system, whereas heat source temperature has a smaller effect on the capacity of the system. Finally, the energy savings that can arise from such a configuration were calculated and up to 25% reduction, if compared to a standard vapour compression system can be achieved. A reduction in CO2 emissions up to 3.5 yearly tons were calculated as well