Solar cooling technologies

Abstract Worldwide the energy consumption for air conditioning and cold is rising year by year. Particularly in recent years, the sale figures of electrically driven compressor chillers (split units) with a cooling capacity range up to 5 kWr have risen rapidly to 100 million units per year sold. The refrigerants that are currently used in the split units no longer have ozone depletion potential, but they have a considerable global warming potential, because of leakages of the split units in the area of 5–15% per year. On the contrary, solar thermal/renewable cooling systems provide a sustainable active air-conditioning possibility. The sorption chillers use environmentally friendly refrigerants as water or ammonia and have only very low electrical demand. Therefore, the operating costs of these solar cooling systems are very low, and the CO2 balance compared to split units is considerably better. In this chapter, the history, current markets, and the potential of solar cooling are presented. Furthermore, the different solar cooling technologies and solar cooling kit components, as well as research and development needs for future development, are described so that the reader can get an idea of the general potential of this technology.