Residential air conditioning and heating by means of enhanced solar collectors coupled to an adsorption system

This work explores the possibility to perform heating and air-conditioning of state of the art building located near Paris in France. For air-conditioning, enhanced compound parabolic solar collectors are used as a heat source of an adsorption system (methanol/activated carbon), while during winter direct coupling with the building is performed. A model describing the adsorption unit, the solar collectors and the house was used to simulate the performances of such an installation. For air-conditioning, thermal comfort is achieved as indoor temperature is kept below 25 C during five consecutive hot days (heat wave effect), contrarily to the case for which only free-cooling during nighttime is used. For heating, the indoor temperature remains below the comfort temperature value by 2 K. Nevertheless, the auxiliary heating need will remain limited so that savings on electricity or fossil fuel consumption will be possible. 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.