Thermo-Economic Performance of a Solar-Driven Single-Effect Absorption Chiller in Lebanon

This paper aims to investigate the performance of a 45 kW single-effect absorption chiller driven by flat plate solar collectors to provide cooling in the moderate climate of Lebanon. To maintain its continuous operation, a hot water thermal storage tank equipped with auxiliary electrical elements was added. Taken as a case study, the hourly cooling load was calculated all year-round for a typical residential building with a built-up area of 400 $\mathrm{m}^{2}$. The system model was designed using simulations in TRNSYS and MATLAB simultaneously. Then, the Hooke and Jeeves optimization method was used to find the best thermo-economic combination between the solar fraction, collector’s area, and hot storage tank’s volume. Results showed that the most realistic system is the one covering 100% of the cooling load since it has the most reasonable price in function of the studied parameters (area of the collector, volume of the hot water storage tank, generator’s temperature, COP and cooling load). Moreover, a financial study was conducted. It showed that the payback period of the optimal system used is around 7 years with an energy-savings equal to 19770 kWh/year and CO2 emission savings equal to 16 tons-CO2/year.