Experimental Evaluation of Solar/Gas HybridPowered Absorption Air Conditioning System

Energy is a vital need of all humans. Space air conditioning using conventional vapour compression systems usually leads to high electricity consumption. There is also the need to safe guard the environment from the harmful emissions of refrigerants used by these systems. In this study an absorption air conditioning system of 3 kW capacity, operating on the lithium bromide/ water pair was constructed and experimented on a test room. The test scale facility is a hybrid absorption cooling system whose thermal energy requirement was provided by solar energy and an auxiliary Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) burner. Experimental tests were conducted in Zaria in the months of April and June, with each experimental day lasting 9 hours. The peak cooling energy demand of the test room was 1.3 kWh. Results from the experiments conducted showed the absorption air conditioning system was able to attain a peak cooling output of 1.5 kW. Maximum Coefficient of Performance (COP) of 0.437 and 0.439 were recorded in the experimental days of April and June respectively. The system achieved space cooling temperatures within 24oC to 27oC. Solar fractions of 0.61 was recorded in April and 0.27 was recorded in June.Keywords: solar energy, absorption, liquefied petroleum gas, air conditioning system, experimental evaluation, cooling