Air Conditioning using Waste Heat and Solar Energy with Phase Change Materials

Energy is an important phenomenon in today's hectic world. A lot of researchers are doing research in this field due to its wide importance and also due to the scarcity of sources of energy in modern world, which in turn needs new inventions and discoveries to satisfy the demands of this scientific world. Research works are done to examine different sources of energy and also to reduce its wastage. Reducing the wastage and utilizing the energy completely depicts the overall efficiency of any system. In today's modern world, air conditioning plays a major role due to the rapid increase in the earth's temperature and therefore, people long for comfort cooling. Nowadays, a lot of energy is wasted in the form of heat which eventually reduces the overall efficiency of any system. Therefore a system should be designed which shows a maximum efficiency by reducing its wastage to a very minimal amount. By using the industrial waste heat from industries and solar heat, an air conditioning system is designed in such a way that the input given to it is used completely without any wastage and the system uses Vapour Absorption System for conditioning of air. Complete utilization of both solar heat and waste heat is achieved using Phase Change Materials. Phase Change Materials are the materials, which is of greater thermal storage capacity. Both the heats are stored in the form of latent heat in Phase Change Materials and it is used later when the substance changes for one phase to another phase by melting. This increases the backup time of our air conditioning system with maximum efficiency. (C) 2014 Published by Elsevier Ltd.