Adsorption Chillers in EnergyPlus?

asked 2014-11-07 01:15:12 -0600

Dimitri C
196 ●4

updated 2015-11-08 11:08:21 -0600

Has anyone developed a reasonable method of modeling aDsorption chillers in E+? I have reviewed the Input/Output reference and see that there are a few ways to model aBsorption chillers but not adsorption. I'm curious if the performance could be approximated with alternate performance curves? However, since they are different processes, I question whether this is a viable approach. The Chiller:Absorption and Chiller:Absorption:Indirect objects seem to be steam-driven whereas an adsorption chiller is hot water driven.

If anyone has come up with an approach for adsorption chillers that is reliable and represents the system performance, please let me know.

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answered 2014-11-17 13:21:19 -0600

Fred Buhl
81 ●1

You are correct that EnergyPlus does not model adsorption chillers. And you are correct that absorption and adsorption are physically different processes. However the absorption chiller model is not a physics based model - it is a performance-based model using curve fits and as such could fit any apparatus having the same inputs and outputs. So theoretically there is a good chance that the adsorption chiller could be modeled using the Chiller:Absorption:Indirect. Of course practice could turn out to be different! The first step would be to find performance data for an adsorption chiller and figure out which of the curves in Chiller:Absorption:Indirect need to be changed. Some may be irrelevant and need to beset to a constant. Pumps may be irrelevant etc, and their consumption set to zero. Until you have performance data for an adsorption chiller it will be impossible to know for sure if it can be modeled using the absorption chiller component.

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answered 2014-11-16 00:23:32 -0600

hongtz
270 ●2 ●2

updated 2014-11-17 09:24:23 -0600

Good question!

This is a correction to my previous post.

The current absorption chillers (Chiller:Absorption and Chiller:Absorption:Indirect) in EnergyPlus does support both steam and hot-water, where you can set the option for the field "The Generator Heat Source Type". The "steam" word in some field names causes some confusion.

So you may want to use the performance curves for hot-water adsorption chiller to simulate its performance, but it is recommended to verify the simulated results against the measured data.

Thanks,