Feasibility and primary energy savings of absorption chillers for data centers, both direct fired and in trigeneration

Abstract

Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Mauritius, 11-13 July, 2011.

Depending on the operating conditions, combined heat, cooling and power systems (CHCP) can sometimes compete energetically and economically with classical vapour compression chillers. Conclusions are often different if either the economic or energetic feasibility is investigated. The application of free chilling can highly affect the results. In this paper, simulations in TRNSYS are performed of a cooling installation of a datacenter of 1500 kW. The use of absorption chillers with gas engines is compared with the application of superchillers (air cooled vapour compression chillers that can run in free chilling). Both single effect and double effect, direct and hot water fired absorption chillers have been studied. The impact of the variation of some crucial parameters on the economic and energetic feasibility of trigeneration is studied. Concerning energetic feasibility, the efficiency of the gas engines and the temperature regimes are some crucial parameters. Varying energy prices highly affect the economic feasibility of trigeneration.