Thermodynamic analysis of a CCHP system for a building using solar collectors and PV panels in two different climate zones in Iran

In this paper, a thermodynamic study of a combined cooling, heating, and power system using a combination of solar collectors and photovoltaic panels was presented for a specific building, for two different climates, i.e., Tabriz and Zahedan, Iran. In order to perform the simulations, the Transient System Simulation Tool software was applied for modeling and verifying the simulations. For this reason, an office building measuring 112.7 m(2)was evaluated using the Hourly Analysis Program 4.9 software, to calculate the building's heating and cooling loads during the crucial days of a year. Subsequently, in order to satisfy the heating and cooling demands, a cogeneration system was modeled, and its results were presented for the crucial days of a year as well as for solar fraction. The total cooling energy generated for Tabriz and Zahedan was obtained 188 and 198 kWh, respectively. These amounts of heating energy were 209 and 111 kWh. Moreover, a parametric study was applied to clarify the effect of various parameters on the system's performance, such as the collector's area, set point temperature of the auxiliary heater, capacity of storage tanks and the circulating fluid's flowrate regarding the apparatus performance. Based on the results of this parameter study and the selection of appropriate values for the system parameters, the solar fraction was calculated, and the results indicated the system improvement is of 25.36% in Tabriz and 23.77% in Zahedan. Furthermore, in order to meet the electrical demand of the building in these two cities 12 and 10 solar panels were required by considering the annual and daily demand analyses and the amount of generated power during the range of consumption were 2007.659 and 2179.517 kWh for Tabriz and Zahedan, respectively.