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APPLICATIONS OF SOLAR AIR CONDITIONING ASSISTED SYSTEMS

IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA FOR RESIDENTIAL BUILDINGS


M PMatenda;A.Raji; W. Fritz
Cape Peninsula University of Technology,South Africa, Western Cape/Bellville South Africa

Abstract Today, with the new technologies in renewable energy, it


is possible to use the solar radiation for driving the
This paper demonstrates how it is possible to set up a HVAC system without using the harmful refrigerants in
solar-powered air conditioning system to provide a the building sector. The greatest advantages of solar
comfortable environment forthe residential buildings energy, compared to the conventional energy sources, is
in Sub-Saharan Africa. that solar energy is clean and can be supplied without
anynegative environmental effects. The sun is the source
This report discusses solar-powered air conditioners of all energy that is used onEarth; the vast majority of
(a solar heat-driven refrigeration system with human and biological activity on Earth is ultimately
electricity as a backup). It focuses on the basic powered by the sun [4].
components of the system without elaborating on the
auxiliary component such as air handling unit, and The solar energy strikes our planet a mere 8minutes and
others components. In addition, this paper describes 20 seconds after leaving the giant furnace, the sun. Solar
and develops a model and simulation of the collector energy already contributes to 95% of our planet’s
to predict the working performance and efficiency of energies. It warms up the Earth’s surface and its
the collector face forweather in Sub-Saharan Africa. atmosphere from space’s temperature of -273.15°C to +
The collector used in this report for the 14.5°C in average and is thus enabling all forms of life
experimentations is a vacuum air collector chosen [4]. Within the next 40 years, solar power will be the
randomly amongst collectors proposed by Integrated most widely-used energy in the world. According to a
Simulation Environment Language (INSEL software). study from European Commission World’s Energy
Although evacuated tubular collector is the most Supply (ECWES), in the year2050, solar power will
widely used in Sub-Saharan Africa. supply about 40% of the Earth’s total energy [4]. For that
reason, the 21st century is called “the Solar Age”.
The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the Normally the sun provides large amounts of irradiation
applicability of a solar air conditioning system is energy and illumination. The sun transmits about 178PW
feasible in Sub-Saharan Africa. Such a system is of irradiated power onto Earth or 561*1024 Joule per year
capable of mitigating the consumption of energy in [5].
buildings by using the refrigerant that has low Ozone
Depletion Potential andlow Global Warming The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that the energy
Potential. provided from the sun in Sub-Saharan Africa, especially
in South Africa, is able to produce mechanical energy that
Keywords: Solar air conditioning assisted system, HVAC can run HVAC systems and the use for other alternatives.
systems, solar collectors, vapor compression system, The duration of sunshine in Sub-Saharan Africa is high,
Rankina cycle. thus in this paper two Sub-Saharan African countries were
chosen as samples for the experimentations namely, South
1 INTRODUCTION Africa (SA) and Zimbabwe (Zim).

In recent years, the world has made a significant effort to The solar energy collector is the energy source of the
reduce the electrical energy consumption which is one of solar air conditioning system that converts solar energy
the major causes of climate change and global warming. into heat energy. The collector is the hinge of the system
In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 90% of electricity is while the collector model and simulations were developed
generated from fossil fuels [1]. However, fossil fuels are in this paper to predict the power output (working
the largest emitter of green-house gases (GHG). performance, efficiency and reliability) related to Sub-
According to some estimates, it is claimed that crude oil Saharan Africa weather.
and natural gas reserves will be depleted within 50 years
[2]. Furthermore, the energy demand is increasing These systems could be applied onresidential buildings as
proportionately to the population growth. auxiliary energy (AE). This report demonstrates how the
Sub-Saharan Africa, especially South African weather, is
The building sector is one of the largest consumers of related to the solar air conditioning technologies.
energy caused by heating, ventilation and air conditioning Moreover, the application of these technologies linked to
(HVAC) and lighting systems [3]. On the otherhand, the the Sub-Saharan Africa weather will be more reliable,
HVAC systems use a refrigerant that is not efficient and effective.
environmentally friendly and with high Ozone Depletion
Potential (ODP) and Global Warming Potential (GWP).
2. APPROACH AND METHODOLOGY
3.2 SOLAR AIR CONDITIONING SYSTEM
The flourishing implementation of solar air conditioning
systems are directly related to suitable solar radiation and The HVAC systems and refrigeration system currently
indirectly to climate conditions. Therefore, the successful use electricity as source of energy. Recently, with the new
installation of solar air conditioning systems hinge on technologies, it is now possible to use clean energy (solar
adequate climatic conditions. In the design simulation is a energy) to drive HVAC systems. The HVAC system that
basic process for successful installations. The major uses solar energy is called a solar air conditioning system.
purpose of the simulation is to determine if the climatic The solar air conditioning system collects solar energy
conditions for the selected area are acceptable to set-up provided from the sun and converts it into electricity
solar air conditioning systems. The simulation will enable (photovoltaic cell), heat (thermal collector) or both
us to predict the solar radiation, and the anticipated (Figure1)
behavior, efficiency and performance for the systems.
This report used Integrated Simulation and This paper is focused on thermal collector; it presents
Environmental Language (INSEL) software tool for many advantages with lower investment costs compared
modelling and simulations. INSEL provides an integrated to photovoltaic cell. Converting the sun’s radiant energy
environment and a graphical programming language for into heat is the most common and well-developed solar
the creation of simulation applications. INSEL was conversion technology today [5].
originally developed for the modelling of renewable
energy systems with the basic idea to connect block to The solar air conditioning systems can be divided into
block diagrams that express a solution for certain two groups of systems: solar autonomous systems and
simulation tasks. solar assisted systems. In a solar autonomous system “all”
energy used by the air conditioning system is solar energy
3 HVAC SYSTEMS [5]. The word “all” is in quotation marks because often
systems called solar autonomous still use grid-provided
3.1. GENERALITY electricity for powering fans and pumps. The solar energy
covers a certain fraction of the energy used by the air
Human beings live in a hostile environment according to conditioning system [5]. This fraction is called the Solar
the weather, season of the year and geographical location. Fraction (SF,SOLF). The rest of the energy is supplied
To make the environment comfortable, several kinds of through an auxiliary or backup system. The auxiliary
Heating Ventilating Air Conditioning (HVAC) equipment system can be a separate air-conditioning system working
has been invented; from the small air conditioner in parallel with the solar system, or it can be integrated
(window unit), through several complex air conditioners into the solar air-conditioning system.Because of the
to solar air conditioning systems. auxiliary system, attainable indoor climate is not limited
by the availability of solar energy [2]. The focus when
The HVAC system’s functioning is primarily based on designing a solar air-conditioning system is the solar
thermodynamic principles and laws, namely; temperature, fraction [5].
pressure and volume, which deal with the relations among
heat, work and properties of system which are in The solar fraction is mathematically expressed as: (solar
equilibrium. The HVAC system deals with heat and mass energy used/total energy used)
transfer, fluid mechanics, expansion of gases and quantity
of motion. Both refrigeration and HVAC systems work on
thermodynamic cycles that are categorized into gas cycles
and vapor cycles [6].
Where;SFis solar fraction, PE is a primary energy
The vapor cycles can be subdivided into vapor
supplied to the system by the auxiliary source,ृcis solar
compression systems, vapor absorption systems, vapor jet
collector efficiency, Icis solar radiation [W/m2] and Ais
systems and so on. Vapor Compression systems and
solar collector aperture[m2]
Vapor absorption refrigeration systems are the most
commonly used systems. The HVAC systems are capable
3.2.1 Solar heat driven refrigeration system
of working in both closed and open loop, which means
the system is in contact with the atmosphere. On the
The vapor compression refrigeration system absorbs heat
market, HVAC and refrigeration systems, vapor
from one zone (lowest temperature) which is named
compression systems and vapor absorption refrigeration
source to another zone (highest temperature) called sink.
systems are the most commonly used method [7]. Both
As mentioned above, this system is a closed loop in which
systems are closed loop systems in which fluids flow. The
a fluid flows through the four main elements of the
main elements are the condenser, evaporator coils, air
system (evaporator, condenser, reversing valve and
filters, air handling unit and compressor for the vapor
compressor) shown in Figure 1. The functioning is based
compression system. Regarding the vapor absorption
on Carnot cycle.
refrigeration system, it has a pump instead of the
compressor. This paper is focused on the vapor
On the market, four major solar thermal driven cooling
compression system that presents more advantages as
components are available. These are absorption,
opposed to the vapor absorption system.
adsorption which is similar to absorption-but does not use Vapor absorption refrigeration systems have been
a pump, a rectifier, an ejector cooling system that is a commercialized and are widely used in various
thermally driven technology by low grade thermal energy, refrigeration and air conditioning applications [9].
and desiccant-an extension of the evaporative cooling
concept in which heat is absorbed by liquid from the 3.2.1.2Rankine refrigeration
substances in contact with it during the evaporation
process. There is also a close relation with latent heat of This paper investigates air conditioning systems using
vaporization of that liquid and the heat absorbed during vapor compression within the compressor which is driven
evaporation [2]. Normally, desiccants are able to obtain by a Rankine cycle system and electricity as a backup.
dry air and humidified air by dehumidifying the inlet air This entails that the air conditioning system combines a
and evaporative cooling. Furthermore, the Rankine power Rankine cycle system and vapor compression system as
cycle for refrigeration can be driven by the solar heat illustrated in Figure 1 and Figure 2. According to [2], the
energy to produce work output [5]. COP of vapor compression systems is the same with the
Rankine cycle, whereas the efficiency of the Rankine
Rankine cycle power is widely used in thermal energy to power cycle is directly related to the temperature of the
produce mechanical work. A Rankine cycle consists of sink and the source. The overall system performance can
the following main components such as: turbine which is be amplified by using a high efficiency flat plate flat
the major component, boiler, feeding pump, piping, and collector (FPC), evacuated tube collector (ETC) or
condenser (Figure 2). parabolic through collector (PTC).

The Rankine cycle is an idealized thermodynamic cycle


of a heat engine that converts heat into mechanical work
[10].

3.3 THERMAL COLLECTOR

The collector is the main element of solar air conditioning


systems that converts solar radiation in heat energy to
supply the Rankine cycle system. The collector is a kind
of heat exchange, the main differenceto conventional heat
exchangers is that the collector does not transfer heat
from fluid to fluid, but it transfers the energy directly
Figure 1: Vapor compression cycle [2] from the solar radiant to the mixture fluid of water and
 propylene glycol. The collector does not use the total
3.2.1.1Absorption refrigeration energy absorbed. However, there are always some losses
(the evasion of heat in surrounding for example). The
Vapor absorption refrigeration systems are similar to efficiency of that surface as a solar collector depends not
vapor compression refrigeration systems but in the only on the absorption efficiency (how much of the
absorption cycle, the compressor is replaced with a incoming solar radiation is absorbed and transformed to
thermal driven absorption mechanism. The main heat), but also on how the thermal and radiation losses to
components of absorption mechanisms are the absorber, the surroundings are minimized, and how the heat from
pump, expansion valve, regenerator and generator. The the collector is removed for useful purpose [5].
component of the absorption mechanism may change with
the use of working fluid in the system. Usually, water- 3.3.1 Evacuated Tube Collector
ammonia (water/NH3) or lithium bromide-water
(LiBr/water) solution is used as the working fluid in the Thus, a suggestion could be to use evacuated collectors,
absorption refrigeration cycle [2] as this is more widely used in Sub-Saharan Africa [12].
Experimentations were performed on the performance
of evacuated tube collectors and flat plat collectors, and
concluded that the evacuated tube collector is more
efficient than the flat-plate collector. Compared to the
flat plat collector, the evacuated tube collector has more
advantages. The evacuated collector consists of single
tubes that are linked to the manifold pipe [11][12].
Evacuated tube collectors have three main geometrical
configurations: concentric fluid inlet and outlet, the
structure that has two separate pipes for inlet and outlet,
and the Sydney - which is formed from double glass
tube and cylindrical metal absorber.
Figure 2: Rankine cycle [8]
4 SIMULATIONS AND EXPERIMENTATIONS
ACCORDING TO SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA
WEATHER

For the experimentations, South Africa and Zimbabwe


were chosen from the Sub-Saharan Africa countries as
samples, and towns chosen from these countries are
Cape Town (South Africa), Durban (South Africa) and
Harare (Zimbabwe). Simulations were conducted by
means of INSEL software to predict the Sub-Saharan
solar radiation to obtain the solar collectors behaviors.
Figures 3 and 4 represent Cape Town (SA) and
Durban’s (SA) MTM weather data respectively. This
data are based on captured information from the INSEL Figure 3 Cape Town MTM weather data base monthly
weather database. The MTM database provides long- means.
term monthly mean values of the most important
climatologically parameters, global irradiations,
ambient temperature etc.

Figures 5, 6 and 7 are the results of solar radiation


simulations that predict the global irradiation, on the
horizontal plane,of Cape Town (SA), Durban (SA) and
Harare (Zim) respectively; where the x coordinate
represents the months in intervals of one, and the y
coordinate represents the global irradiance in units of
KWhm-2d-2. The results show that solar radiations are
almost the same in all Sub-Saharan countries. The solar
radiation is very high in summer seasons, especially in
January and in December, and very low in winter
seasons especially in June.
Figure 8 represents the result of the collector’s
simulation which predicts the efficiency of the collector
according to South Africa and Zimbabwe’s weather.
The x- coordinate depicts the months from January to Figure 4 Durban MTM weather data base monthly means.
December. The y- coordinate is the inlet temperature
assumed variable and z-coordinate is the result of the
simulation or efficiency of the collector’s behaviors.
According to the results, the efficiency of the collector
is high in summer and very low in winter especially in
June. Thus, this system definitely needs a backup
network to perform. From the obtained results the
recommendationis to use the ETC which is more
efficient in comparison to the sampled collector. Thus, Figure 5 Result of solar radiation in Cape Town.
Figure9 represents the simulation block diagrams of the
solar air collector.
The solar air collector simulated in this paper is form
INSEL named Block SCAIRC with a ripped absorber
(channel structure). The ETC was not provided by
INSEL that is why the sampled collector was chosen.
This collector has 6 inputs, 13 outputs and 18
parameters defined in the INSEL bookmarks.

Figure 10displays the results of the simulation for daily


solar radiation in Cape Town and Figure 11 is the block Figure 6 Result of solar radiation in Durban’s simulation.
diagram of the solar radiation’s simulation.

Figure 12 shows the average monthly sunshine in Cape


Town.Compared with the found results, it can be
concluded that the shapes of the curve are similar to
that result of Cape Town solar radiation.
Figure 7 Result of solar radiation in Harare’s simulation. Figure 12 Sunshine in Cape Town(weather-and-climate.com,
2013).

5 CONCLUSIONS

According to the results found from the simulations, Sub-


Saharan Africa is in a good position as it receives large
amounts of solar radiation all year-round. Sub-Saharan
Africa, especially South African weather is related to the
Figure 8 average monthly predicted solar air collector’s solar air conditioning technologies. Moreover, the
efficiency in Cape Town.
application of these technologies linked to the Sub-
 Saharan Africa weather will be more reliable, efficient
and effective during the summer season than in winter
season.

The increasing population is directly linked to the


increase of electrical energy consumption in the building
sector as well as HVAC and lighting systems. The
applications of solar air conditioning in the residential
Figure 9 Block diagrams solar collector simulation. building will be the best solution for over consumption of
 electrical energy. The application of these technologies in
Sub-Saharan Africa will contribute a lot to the fight
against GHG emissions. In addition, the solar air
conditioning system uses a refrigerant that is environment
friendly.

6 BIBLIOGRAPHIES

[1] S. Ziuku and E. Meyer, “Mitigating climate change


Figure 10 Daily solar radiations in Cape Town. through renewable energy and energy efficinecy in
 the the residential sector in South Africa,”
International journal of renewable energy
technology research, pp. 33-43, 2012.
[2] N. Kalka, E. Yaung and A. Celiktas, “Solar thermal
air conditioning technology reducing footprint,”
renewable and sustainable energy reviews , pp.
6353-6383, 2012.
[3] R. S. Simpsom, Lighting Control Technology and
Applications, Focal press, 2003.
Figure 11 Simulation block diagram of daily solar radiations. [4] S. C. Krauter, Solar Electric Power Generation
 Photovoltaic Energy System, Rio de Janeiro:
Springer, 2006.
[5] I. Kharagpur, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning,
2008.
[6] F. C. M. Quiston, J. D. Parker, J. D. Spitler and W. J,
Heating Ventilation Air Conditioning analysis and
design, 6th edition ed., Jonh wisley and son, 2005.
[7] N. Rone, Solar air conditioning system, Goterborg:
ebook edition, 2004.
[8] R. K. Rajput, Engineering Thermodynamics, New
delhi: Laxmi, 2007.
[9] W. P. Jones, Air Conditioning Engineering,
Burlington: Elsevier, 2001.
[10] D. E. Winterbone, Advanced Thermodynamics for
Engineers, Arnold, 1997.
[11] S. A. Kalogirou, “Solar thermal collector and
applications,” Progress in energy and combustion
science., pp. 231-295, 2004.
[12] F. A. d. Paula, “Comparison between Flat Plate and
Evacuated Tube Collectors in Baltimore, MD,”
University of Texas, Texas, 2009.

7 AUTHORS

Principal Author: Mutondo Paul Matenda holds a


Bachelor of Science in Electro-
Mechanical Engineering at
Université de Lubumbashi (D.R
Congo).Currently busy with his
Master thesis based on automated
Building energy modeling in new
modelling Language “SysML”.
Email address:
paulinmutondo@gmail.com.
Cell number: 0027710115114.

Co-author: Dr Atanda Raji, Lecturer at the Department


of Electrical and Mechanical
Engineering at Cape Peninsula
University of Technology. He
holds an M Tech and D Tech at
CPUT.Programme Coordinator of
Electrical Engineering BTech
(Bellville Campus) and Stream
Leader Acting atCenter for
Distribution Power Electronic
Systems.

Co-author: Dr. Wilfred Fritz is a senior lecturer at the


Department of Electrical
Engineering at CPUT, holds
BEng (Stellenbosch University),
MTech and D Tech (CPUT)
degrees. He is a registered
Certified Measurement and
Verification Professional
(CMVP) and also a professional
engineer (Pr Eng) affiliated to
the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) and ECSA
respectively.

Presenter: This paper is presented by Mutondo Paul


Matenda

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