Energy consumption characteristics of an absorption chiller during the partial load operation

The objectives of this study are to analyze performance characteristics during partial load operation and to calculate energy consumption amount of H2O/LiBr absorption chiller with a capacity of 210 RT. The effect of cooling water flow rate and cooling water inlet temperature on the absorption performance and energy saving is quantified during the partial load operation. It is found that the performance of absorption system is more sensitive to the change of inlet water temperature rather than the cooling water flow rate. Even if the cooling water flow rate is reduced to 60% of the standard value, the capacity is recovered if the temperature of cooling water decreases about 2.0 °C. The pumping power of cooling water is 4 times higher than that of cooling tower during the partial operation mode and the pumping power of cooling water becomes more significant with decreasing the partial load. It is concluded that when the partial load is in the range of 100–40%, the reduction of the required power by 23% can be realized by decreasing the cooling water inlet temperature of 1.0 °C.