448 - Heating and Cooling with a Small Scale Solar Driven Adsorption

Chiller Combined with a Borehole System

Dr. Tomas Núñez*; Björn Nienborg; York Tiedtke

Fraunhofer-Institut for Solar Energy Systems ISE, Heidenhofstraße 2, 79106 Freiburg, Germany
*
Corresponding Author, tomas.nunez@ise.fraunhofer.de

Abstract
The performance of a solar driven adsorption cooling system is presented in this paper. The
system consists of a reversible 5.5kW adsorption machine from the German company
SorTech, a 20m² flat plate collector field with a 2m³ buffer storage and a borehole array of
three 80m boreholes. In the summer period, the adsorption machine is operated as a chiller
driven by solar energy while the boreholes are used for heat rejection. In winter it is operated
as a heat pump driven by the heat from a heating network and using the boreholes as low
temperature heat source. The operation results presented here correspond to the period from
June 4th to December 1st, 2007. The machine as well as the whole system operated reliably
and as expected during the whole monitoring period. An overall thermal COP of 0.57 and an
hourly mean chilling power of around 4.4kW were obtained during the cooling season. The
electricity consumption was about 10% of the produced cold. During the heating season a
thermal COP of 1.43 and hourly mean heating powers of 9.4kW were obtained. Frequency
distributions of the registered driving, heat rejection and chilled water temperatures give a
picture of operation conditions in a real application.
Keywords: adsorption, solar cooling, ground source heat exchanger, system performance

1. Introduction
In the frame of the finished EU project MODESTORE a solar driven cooling system with a 5.5kW
reversible adsorption chiller was installed at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems. In
a previous publication [1] first simulation results which resulted in the present design and
dimensioning of the system were published. In this publication the system performance and
operation results from the first operation period in both modes (cooling and heating) is presented.

2. Description of installed system

2.1. System and operation concept
The system concept is shown in Fig. 1. The core components are the reversible adsorption machine
which can be operated as a thermally driven chiller or heat pump and the borehole system that is
used as heat rejection system for the chiller mode as well as the low temperature heat source for the
heat pump mode.
In the summer operation mode (left schematic in Fig. 1) the adsorption machines works as a
thermally driven chiller. It is driven by the heat from the solar collectors. A connection to the
heating network of the building works as a heat backup in case of not sufficient solar driving heat.
The system provides cooling to a cooling coil in the air handling unit, which is installed in the inlet
air duct to the institutes’ canteen kitchen (3000m³/h). The waste heat from the chiller is rejected
through the borehole system.

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In the winter operation mode (right schematic in Fig. 1) the adsorption machine is working as a
thermally driven heat pump. It is driven by heat from the heating network of the institute, which
comes form a CHP unit, and lifts low temperature heat from the boreholes to the useful
temperature level. This useful heat is used in a heating coil to pre-heat the air in the main duct of
the ventilation system (9000m³/h).

Fig. 1. System schematic with summer (left) and winter operation mode (right).
The system installed at the Fraunhofer Institute consists of a solar collector array of 20m² with a
2m³ buffer storage and three boreholes of 80m each. An adsorption chiller ACS05 from the
German company SorTech AG with a rated nominal cooling power of 5.5kW is used. This chiller
is a pre-series development based on a previous prototype presented in [2].
For a general application in the residential sector this system layout offers the following
advantages:
• The solar system is used through the whole year. In winter it is used for solar assisted heating
and in summer it provides the driving heat for the cooling system.
• The reversible adsorption machine is also used during the whole year: as a heat pump in winter
and as a thermally driven chiller in the summer period.
• In the heat pumping mode the adsorption system enhances the energy output of the driving heat
source through the use of ambient heat from the boreholes.
• The borehole system also serves two purposes: first as a low temperature heat source in winter
and second as a heat rejection system for the chiller in summer. Thus the boreholes are not only
used year round but are also regenerated in the summer season.
• In favourable conditions and periods of low cooling power requirements, the installed boreholes
can be used for direct cooling.
Nevertheless, neither the direct solar heating nor the direct cooling with the boreholes has been
implemented in the present system.

2.2. Control procedures

The operational concept foresees an operation only during weekdays. The operation conditions are
as follows:
Cooling operation is carried out when:
• the inlet air temperature exceeds 20°C (2K hysteresis),
• the air temperature in the kitchen is above 23°C (2K hysteresis),
• the time is between 6:45 and 16:00 o’clock.

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Heating operation is carried out when:
• the inlet temperature in the main air duct is below 14.5°C (3K hysteresis),
• the inlet air temperature is above 3°C (freeze protection of the machine),
• the time is between 6:45 and 19:00 o’clock.
Solar heat is used whenever the mean temperature in the upper part of the storage is above 73°C
with a 5K hysteresis for turning of solar heat supply.
In spring and autumn it may happen that the air temperature falls below 14.5°C in the mornings
and thus the heating mode is activated, but later during the day temperatures in the canteen kitchen
rise above the threshold for cooling operation. In these cases the system is operated in the heating
mode first and later in the cooling mode. This operation is called ‘alternate mode’.
The volume flows in the three circuits are kept constant and correspond to the nominal flows
required by the chiller. Energy efficient pumps have been installed and the flow rate is set via the
three power steps of the pumps.

3. Data acquisition and evaluation

A new prototype of the reversible adsorption machine was installed in spring of 2007 and is in
operation since then. In the summer season of 2007 about 282 hours of operation in the cooling
mode have been monitored. Evaluation is carried out at three levels:
1. performance of the chiller as a component
2. evaluation of the operation conditions of the whole system for system optimisation
3. evaluation of the overall systems energetic performance
These three evaluation levels address each a different group: while the first is mainly important for
the chiller manufacturer in order to decide if the machine is working as expected, the second level
targets the system developers which are interested in the optimisation and smooth operation of all
system components in order to optimise the energy efficiency and thus produce the highest
possible savings for the end-user. This result is covered with the third evaluation level.

3.1. Monitoring equipment and evaluation of raw data

The data acquisition system consists of internally integrating heat meters with matched Pt100 type
temperature sensors. The integrator has a sampling rate of 1s and calculates cumulated energy
amounts and mean temperatures and powers. This internal sampling rate assures a correct
collection of energy data for the highly dynamic temperature patterns characteristic of adsorption
systems. The integrator and further temperature sensors are read out by a computer with a sampling
rate of 15s. The monitoring software further reduces these values to cumulated energies and mean
temperatures which are stored with an interval of 5 minutes in the raw data measurement file. The
storage interval can be set by the system operator and thus allows a flexible data management. The
post processing of the raw data further reduces the values to hourly accumulated and mean values –
depending on the quantity considered. For the hourly mean temperature values also a standard
deviation is calculated in order to judge the stability of the temperature within the evaluated hour.
3.2. Overview of operation period
The results presented here correspond to the operation period from June 4th, 2007 to December 1st,
2007. From these 180 days the system was in operation during 108 day. The days without
operation were either weekends or days without monitoring data due to a lightning stroke into the
data acquisition system. Within these 108 days 1034 hours of operation were registered. In some
hours the machine was in operation only a few minutes, but in most of the registered hours a

3
continuous operation was observed. In Table 1 the number of hours with an operation time within
given limits is shown.
Table 1.Statistics of the operation hours

Operation Number of hours with an operation time t (in minutes) within the given limits
mode <15 min 15≤t<30 min 30≤t<45min 45≤t<60 min 60min
cooling 65 23 36 37 282
heating 56 72 28 73 398
solar 39 35 34 26 176

4. Operation results
4.1. Operation of the adsorption chiller
Performance of the chiller
In order to evaluate the performance of the chiller a comparison of experimentally measured
cooling capacities and COPs with expected values from calculations is shown in Fig. 2. The
experimental values were selected according to the following criteria:
1. a continuous operation during the whole hour as well as in the hour before and after,
2. stable temperatures with a small standard deviation has been measures in all three circuits,
3. only cooling operation was considered.
The results presented in Fig. 2 show an even dispersion of the experimental and modelled values
within a 10% range. No systematic deviation is observed and thus the expected values were
confirmed.

0.7 70%

0.65 60%

0.6 50%

0.55 40%
deviation
COP

0.5 30%
COP_exp. (70-72; 16-18; 13-15) COP_model
COP_exp. (72-74; 18-20; 12-14) COP_model
0.45 20%
deviation (%) deviation (%)

0.4 10%

0.35 0%

0.3 -10%
3.5 4 4.5 5 5.5
cooling power [kW]

Fig. 2. Experimental (COP_exp.) and modelled (COP_model) performance of the chiller at the same
operation conditions. Measured temperatures were used as input values for the model.
4.2. Cooling operation
For the evaluation of the cooling operation only hours with constant and steady operation were
considered. Operation periods less than 60 minutes within one hour were not considered in this
evaluation in order to avoid effects of transient states. From Table 1 it can be seen that 282 hours
could be considered.

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Cooling power and COP
In Fig. 3 and Fig. 4 a histogram of the measured COP and cooling power is shown. COPs between
0.48 to 0.62 were obtained. The measured power shows a much larger dispersion: cooling powers
between 3.1 and 5.9kW have been obtained.

30 120% 30 120%

25 100% 25 100%

cumulated frequency [%]

cumulated frequency [%]

number of hours [h]

numeber of hours [h]

20 80% 20 80%

15 60% 15 60%

10 40% 10 40%

5 20% 5 20%

0 0% 0 0%
0
36
38

4
42
44
46
48

5
52
54
56
58

6
62
64
66

0
1
3
5
7
9
1
3
5
7
9
1
3
5
7
9
0.

0.

0.

3.
3.
3.
3.
3.
4.
4.
4.
4.
4.
5.
5.
5.
5.
5.
0.
0.

0.
0.
0.
0.

0.
0.
0.
0.

0.
0.
0.

COP cooling power [kW]

Fig. 3. Frequency diagram of thermal cooling COPs Fig. 4. Frequency diagram of cooling powers.
Taking into account the total cold production and heat input over the whole cooling period
including hours with on-off behaviour an overall COP of 0.574 with a standard deviation of 0.066
for the hourly values is obtained. The mean cooling power for the hourly values was 4.38kW with
a standard deviation of 0.67kW. Nevertheless it is not clear, if this variation of cooling powers is
due to a limitation in the capabilities of the chiller or to the requirements of the load. Although the
cooling load of the canteen’s kitchen is almost always above 6kW because of the high internal
loads, the control system may limit the chillers output power in order to avoid too low inlet air
temperatures which may be uncomfortable.
Driving, heat rejection and chilling temperatures
The control system start the chiller only if a driving temperature above 72°C is available, and turns
the machine off when it falls below 68°C (Fig. 5). The measured heat rejection temperatures were
very favourable for the chiller: in 95% of the hours an inlet temperature to the machine between
18°C and 20°C was registered. These numbers show the effectiveness of the installed boreholes for
the heat rejection in the present system. Chilled water temperatures (inlet temperature to the
cooling coil) between 7°C and 14°C were measured. As a conclusion, the temperature lift defined
as temperature difference between chilled water outlet and heat rejection temperature inlet to the
machine was about 7.9K (Fig. 6).
Solar fraction and electricity consumption
From the 282 operation hours in the cooling mode about 35.8% (101 hours) no solar operation was
possible. On 148 hours (52%) a complete solar operation covering the whole hour was possible, on
the remaining 33 hours the solar system could only provide a part of the driving heat. From an
energetic point of view, 59.8% of the driving energy over the whole cooling operation period came
from the solar system.
The electricity consumption over the whole cooling period was 10% of the cooling energy. This
electricity consumption includes the electricity needs for the chiller itself, the heat rejection via the
boreholes, the driving circuit and the cold distribution to the cooling coil in the air handling unit.
But it does not include the pump of the solar loop.

5
 90 120% 80 120%

80 70
100% 100%

cumulated frequency [%]

cumulated frequency [%]

70
60
number of hours [h]

number of hours [h]

60 80% 80%
50
50
60% 40 60%
40

30 40% 30
40%
20 20
20% 20%
10 10
0 0%
0 0%
0 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 88 90 92
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
driving temperature (T_HT_in) [°C]
temperature lift: T_MT_in - T_NT_out [K]

Fig. 5. Frequency diagram of driving temperatures Fig. 6. Frequency diagram of temperature lifts.
(from heating net or solar system).
Calculating an electric COP for the whole system as the cooling energy produced per kWh of
electric energy consumed, an electric COP of approximately 10 can be derived. It has to be noted
however, that although energy efficient pumps have been used, all pumps operate at constant
volume flows independently of the chillers output power. Thus a constant electricity consumption
of about 500W is measured during operation. Optimising the control, e.g. using a flow rate control
when low cooling capacity is needed may give potential for reducing the electricity consumption.
Operation day in the cooling mode
In Erro! A origem da referência não foi encontrada. an example of the operation during a
normal summer day is shown. The diagram corresponds to June 13th, 2007. Cooling operation
starts at 7:30 and ends at 14:30. In the morning till 11:30 the chiller is operated with heat from the
heating net as the temperature in the solar storage was not sufficient to operate the machine. The
shaded area between 11:30 and 14:30 shows the time when the system was operated with heat from
the solar system.
Large temperature variations can be observed in the driving circuit. While the cyclic temperature
peaks observed in the return flow from the chiller in all circuits (T_HT_out, T_MT_out and
T_NT_out) are characteristic of the periodic working adsorption machine, the variations in the
driving inlet temperature (T_HT_in) are due to the dynamic behaviour of the plate heat exchanger
within this circuit but also variations in the temperature of the heating net. These variations were
not expected. A much more stable inlet temperature is observed during the solar operation period.
Further it can be seen, that the boreholes effectively attenuate the temperature peaks giving smooth
and constant feed temperatures (T_MT_in) to the machine.
4.3. Heating operation
For the heating operation the adsorption chiller is operated as a heat pump. For this operation the
evaporator is connected to the borehole system and the heat rejection to the heating coil in the air
handling unit.
Heating power and COP
As for the cooling operation, for the following statistics on hourly values, only hours with a
constant operation of the machine were considered in order to be sure to consider steady state
conditions only. This covers more than 63% of the hours with operation, as can be deduced from
Table 1. Fig. 8 shows the frequency diagrams of the hourly COP and heating powers (Fig. 9). For
the whole heating operation period a thermal COP of 1.43 is obtained. The hourly mean heating
power was 9.43kW with a standard deviation of 1.59kW.

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 12
80
T_HT_in
T_HT_out
10
70 T_MT_in
T_MT_out

power of solar system [kW]

T_NT_in
60

temperature [°C]
T_NT_out 8
Q_dot_Solar
50
solar operation
6
40

4
30

20
2

10
0
06:00 08:00 10:00 12:00 14:00 16:00 18:00 20:00 22:00
time

Fig. 7. Temperature development in the three hydraulic circuits for the 13th of June 2007. Solar operation is
in the period between 11:30 and 14:30.
30 120% 35 120%

30 100%
25 100%
cumulated frequency [%]

cumulated frequency [%]

number of hours [h]
number of hours [h]

25
20 80% 80%
20
15 60% 60%
15

10 40% 40%
10

5 20% 5 20%

0 0% 0 0%
2
6

4
8
2
6

4
8
2
6
10
.4
.8
.2
.6
12
0

8
5.
5.

6.
6.
7.
7.

8.
8.
9.
9.
0
04

1
16

22

28

34

4
46

52

58

64

7
76

82

10
10
11
11
1.

1.

1.
1.

1.

1.

1.

1.

1.

1.

1.

1.

1.

1.

heating power of heat pump [kW]

COP

Fig. 8. Frequency diagram of heating COP Fig. 9. Frequency diagram of heating powers

Operation temperatures
Fig. 10 shows the statistics of the driving temperatures. It can be seen, that in the heating mode
driving temperatures below 68°C were also used. Unlike in the cooling mode, where the
temperature in the buffer storage is used in order to decide whether high enough temperatures are
available for operation, in the heating mode the machine is switched on whenever heating is
required, assuming that the temperature in the heating net is always high enough. From the
resulting operation conditions it can be seen that the available temperatures in the heating net
present a high variation and are not constant at 72°C as the design values may suggest.
The temperatures fed into the heating coil (Fig. 11) were moderate (24°C to 30°C) and those from
the boreholes where quite high (13-15°C). In Fig. 12 the temperature lift is shown. As in the
cooling mode, only low temperature lifts were required, with a mean at about 13K. The power
extracted from the borehole system was between 2.5 and 3.7kW (Fig. 13).

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 80 120% 120 120%

70
100% 100 100%

cumulated frequency [%]

cumulated frequency [%]
60
number of hours [h]

number of hours [h]

80% 80 80%
50

40 60% 60 60%

30
40% 40 40%
20
20% 20 20%
10

0 0% 0 0%
0 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 82 84 86 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 100

driving temperature (T_Ht_in) [°C] temperature to heating coil (T_MT_out) [°C]

Fig. 10. Frequency diagram of driving temperatures. Fig. 11. Frequency diagram of temperatures to the
heating coil (output temperature from the heat pump)
100 120% 50 120%
90 45
100% 100%

cumulated frequency [%]

80 40
cumulated frequency [%]

number of hours [h]

number of hours [h]

70 35
80% 80%
60 30
50 60% 25 60%
40 20
40% 40%
30 15
20 10
20% 20%
10 5
0 0% 0 0%
9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18
0

9
2.

2.

2.

2.

2.

3.

3.

3.

3.

3.
temperature lift: T_MT_out-T_NT_in [K]
power extracted from boreholes [kW]

Fig. 12. Temperature lifts in the heating mode Fig. 13. Frequency diagram of power extracted from
the boreholes.
Operation in the heating mode
In Erro! A origem da referência não foi encontrada. the operation temperatures on November
15th, 2007 as a function of time are shown. A strong variation of the driving temperature
(T_HT_in) is observed. This variation is inherent to the operation of the heating net and out of the
control of the present system. Nevertheless it shows that even though the heating net is designed
for a constant temperature of 72°C reality shows also much lower temperatures. Again, the
periodic temperature peaks characteristic of adsorption systems can be seen clearly in all return
temperatures (T_HT_out, T_MT_out, T_NT_out).

80
T_HT_in
T_HT_out
70 T_MT_in
T_MT_out
T_NT_in
60
temperature [°C]

T_NT_out

50

40

30

20

10

06 08 10 12 14 16 18 20 22
time of the day

Fig 14. Temperatures in the heating mode for the 15th of November, 2007.

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5. Conclusion and discussion
As a conclusion it can be said that the installed adsorption chiller worked reliably and the rated
COP and chilling powers were within the expected range. Certainly the operation conditions were
very favourable as the required temperature lifts were around 10K in the cooling as well as in the
heating mode. These low temperature lifts favour a high performance of the machine.
The application required cooling only during the day, thus the control switched the machine on
only in this period. With this background, the solar fraction for cooling was around 60%. This may
be different and may result in a different system design (e.g. larger solar field or larger storage) if
cooling is also required beyond the hours with solar radiation. The overall thermal COP of the
chiller for cooling operation was 0.574. In this period 1230kWh of cooling was produced with an
electricity requirement to operate the system including cold distribution of 125.8kWh.
In the heating operation the overall thermal COP was 1.43, with a total of 3274kWh of useful heat
produced and an electricity requirement of 180.5kWh. As it is difficult to obtain high temperatures
from the solar collectors in the winter season, only 5% of the driving heat was provided from this
source.
The electric power requirement of the system, excluding the pump in the solar loop, is about
500W, independently of the operation mode, cooling or heating power. This power requirement
includes cold and heat distribution, therefore any comparison has to be done taking into account
the whole system as a basis. However, using the boreholes as heat rejection system favours the low
electricity consumption as no additional cooling tower was required for the cooling mode.
The temperature diagrams show strong fluctuations in the driving temperatures, especially when
operated in combination with the heating net. The fluctuations were less when heat from the solar
system was used. This shows the attenuating effect of the solar buffer storage. Strong fluctuations
in the return lines from the machine are inherent of the periodic operation of adsorption units and
have to be taken into account in the design and evaluation of the system. As a conclusion, it has to
be analysed if some kind of small mixing storage or any other thermal capacity device to attenuate
the temperature peaks is required in order to operate such an adsorption system in a stable way.
The reliable operation of the installed unit opened up the path to an improved pilot product, called
ACS08, produced and offered by the company SorTech [3].

References
[1] T. Núñez, M. Hau, H-M. Henning, »A Small Capacity Adsorption System in a Heating and Cooling
Application: The German Field-test in the MODESTORE Project«, Proceedings of the 1st International
Conference Solar Air-Conditioning, Bad Staffelstein, Germany, (2005), pp. 335–340.
[2] T. Núñez, W. Mittelbach, H-M. Henning, »Development of a Small Capacity Adsorption System for
Heating and Cooling Applications«, in: International Journal of HVAC&R Research, USA, (2006) Vol.
12, no. 3b, pp. 749-765.
[3] SorTech Adsorption Chiller ACS 08; www.sortech.de