Concept design and formation of a lithium bromide–water cooling system powered by supercritical CO2 solar collector

In this study, concept design and tests for the combination of a supercritical CO2 solar collector powered LiBr–H2O refrigeration system has been investigated. The system is basically consisted of one supercritical CO2 solar collector system and one double effect lithium bromide–water absorption refrigeration cycle. The assessment of the overall performance is based on the theoretical analysis of the refrigeration cycle and experiments on a supercritical solar collector system in Shaoxing City, Zhejiang Province of China. Energy balance and seasonal efficiency analysis are developed in this study. The maximum daily averaged COP (Coefficient of Performance) of the proposed system is estimated up to 1.08, while the averaged COP ranges from 0.53 to 0.91 for different months. The obtained results indicate considerable improvement to conventional solar-assisted cooling systems. In addition, it is also found that this system performs better than traditional systems even when the solar radiation is not at high level, which is due to the stability and high efficiency of supercritical circulation collector cycle proposed. The system feasibility and possible future directions of the proposed system are also discussed in detail in this study. It is hoped that the current results can be of help to related system designs.