Global efficiency of direct flow vacuum collectors in autonomous solar desiccant cooling: simulation and experimental results

Using solar thermal energy is an interesting option for heat driven air conditioning e.g. desiccant cooling, but it is very important to know with which efficiency this renewable energy is used. In this paper a solar installation of direct flow vacuum tube collectors dedicated for desiccant cooling is investigated. First a model of the mentioned collectors is presented and implemented into the simulation environment SPARK then it is validated experimentally. After, simulations of autonomous operations are run and the global efficiency is calculated. Finally the effect of increasing the regeneration temperature on the efficiency is studied.