THEORETICAL-ANALYSIS OF AN OPEN-CYCLE ABSORPTION HEATING AND COOLING SYSTEM

In warm countries, such as Italy and Spain, the increasing demand for space conditioning cannot be met by the current capacity of installed electric power. This has led to a growing interest in cooling with nat ural gas. An interesting thermal cooling system uses open-cycle absorp tion. It treats the air directly without heat exchangers and with very low temperature drops. With absorption dehumidification it is possibl e not only to obtain a cooling system similar in performance to conven tional thermal cooling systems, but also, with few modifications, a hi gh-performance heating system fed by a natural gas burner, which combi nes simplicity with PER typical of a gas driven heat pump. The propose d new system described in the paper is studied both in winter and summ er mode, evaluating the influence of the different parameters. Copyrig ht (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd and IIR