Objective
Solar cooling technologies use solar thermal energy provided through solar collectors to power thermally driven cooling machines. Cooling demand is rapidly increasing in many parts of the world: the combination of solar thermal and cooling has a high potential to replace conventional cooling machines based on electricity and depleting refrigerants. However, while larger solar cooling systems have been successfully demonstrated, smaller systems have not yet entered the market due to various technical and economical reasons. Until today, there is a lack of small scale units, fully automated and autonomous package-solutions for residential and small commercial or industrial applications, low temperature cooling systems: ALONE aims at overcoming these barriers. The main aim of ALONE proposal is to improve solar cooling technologies based on systems able to cope with low temperature cooling applications. Effort will be concentrated on absorption chiller optimisation for providing both heating and cooling in solar systems: in fact, components’ adaptation and control logic optimisation is a necessary step towards higher conversion performances and reduced costs. This objective will be achieved through the development and improvement of new components of small capacity cooling systems, collectors and control systems, as well as a plant characterised by pre-engineered solutions. Advanced modelling and simulation will also support the design. The whole system will work in a fully automated way throughout the year. In order to foster the market penetration and widespread use of sustainable technology, major attention is paid to the simplification of installation effort and the minimisation of the need maintenance, what is of utmost importance for such kind of plants which in any case will run without operator. The project will demonstrate this innovative system at four selected end-user sites, collecting real data and assessing performances under full plant operation.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringcontrol systems
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringthermodynamic engineering
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringenergy and fuelsrenewable energysolar energysolar thermal
Keywords
Call for proposal
FP7-ENERGY-2007-2-TREN
See other projects for this call
Funding Scheme
CP - Collaborative project (generic)Coordinator
50121 Florence
Italy