Adsorption chiller operation by recovering low-temperature heat from building integrated photovoltaic thermal collectors: Modelling and simulation

This work focuses on a dynamic simulation model for the energy, economic and environmental analysis of an innovative polygenerative system layout based on a building integrated photovoltaic thermal system coupled to an adsorption chiller and to an electricity storage system. The thermal energy of building integrated photovoltaic thermal collectors is exploited in order to produce solar space heating and cooling and domestic hot water. Auxiliary electric air-to-water heat pumps/chillers and a gas-fired condensation boiler are included in the system model in order to integrate the demands of heating, cooling and domestic hot water production. The electricity produced by building integrated photovoltaic thermal collectors is used to satisfy the building needs. The eventual extra-production is delivered to the grid or stored in lead-acid batteries. By means of the developed dynamic simulation model (implemented in TRNSYS environment) the energy system performance on the whole building can be analysed in terms of heating/cooling energy, electricity and domestic hot water demands. In particular, both the passive and active energy effects of the investigated collectors can be assessed. The model includes a suitable tool for the comparison of the innovative system layout vs. traditional reference building-plant systems. For energy, economic and environmental impact optimization purposes, sensitivity analyses can be performed by varying the main system design parameters with respect to the value of reference case ones. In order to show the potentiality of the developed simulation model, several new case studies are developed. They refer to a 3-floor office building located in four different Italian weather zones. Simulation results show that the obtained SPBs, the primary energy saving for electricity and domestic hot water production, and the equivalent carbon dioxide avoided emissions range between 10.6–11.3 years, 58.5–68.8% and 76.3–90.2%, respectively.