Performance evaluation of a liquid desiccant solar air conditioning system

The current work focuses on the Queen's University Solar Liquid Desiccant Cooling Demonstration project. A solar Liquid Desiccant Air Conditioning system (LDAC) has been installed at a field site in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, and is currently being tested to evaluate the performance of the system when driven by solar energy. The installed system features a low-flow parallel plate liquid desiccant air conditioner, and a 95m(2) evacuated tube solar collector array. While summer testing has only recently begun, five test days have shown an overall solar collector efficiency of 56%, solar fraction of 63% and a thermal COP of 0.47. The average total cooling was 12.3kW and average latent cooling was 13.2kW. The solar array was also operated between October 2011 and May 2012 and heat was rejected using a dry cooler. Over the heating season 18,800kWh were collected with an average collection efficiency of 61%. TRNSYS simulations over-predicted the amount of energy collected by 13% (21,264kWh) likely due to failed vacuum tubes, snow cover of collectors, and improper sensor location. (C) 2012 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.