An Overview of Solar Assisted Air-Conditioning System Application in Small Office Buildings in Malaysia

In many regions of the world especially tropical weather in Malaysia, the demand for cooling of indoor air is growing due to increasing comfort expectations and increasing cooling loads. Air-conditioning, the most common cooling mechanism for providing indoor cooling in buildings has become a necessity in most buildings. However, air-conditioning is the dominant energy consuming appliances in most of today office buildings. Today most of the small office buildings deployed conventional cooling technologies which typically uses an electrically driven compressor system that exhibits several clear disadvantages such as high energy consumption, high electricity peak loads demand and in general it employ refrigerants which have several negative impacts on the environment. Because of the high energy cost, the decrease of fossil fuel resources and the rise of environmental pollution, the utilization of low level renewable energy sources such as solar energy in refrigeration systems has become a way to address these problems. The solar assisted air-conditioning system uses the heat from the solar radiation to drive a thermally-driven chiller such as absorption chiller. Solar assisted air conditioning system produces cooling with considerably less electricity demand than conventional air-conditioning systems. With current solar collector technology like evacuated tube solar collector which able to produce high temperature approximately 88 C, it has made heat source from solar energy viable to drive the absorption chiller to produce chilled water for indoor cooling purposes. In addition, the working fluids like Lithium Bromide used in the absorption chiller does not contribute to global warming, contrary to most working fluids in conventional compression chiller. With such great potential application of solar assisted air conditioning system in Malaysia tropical weather, this paper provide an technical overview and economic feasibility of a solar assisted air conditioning system under Malaysian climatic conditions.