Air Conditioning System Integrated with Thermal Energy Storage for Buildings in Tropical Climates

Abstract

Thermal energy storage (TES) is an innovative technology that can help mitigate environmental problems and make energy consumption in air conditioning systems more efficient. TES also helps to decouple the production and use of cooling. In this work, a mathematical model was used to obtain the thermal loads of the environment based on Brazilian standards and to simulate the operation of an air conditioning system integrated with TES. A refrigeration system capable of providing cooling capacity for the selected environment was used. It simulated the operation of refrigeration systems to evaluate the coefficient of performance of the refrigeration cycle and the refrigeration system, including the TES, for the city of Teresina, in the northeast region of Brazil. On each day, the efficiency of the air-cooled chiller coupled with a TES that used paraffin with phase change material was verified. Based on the data obtained from the mathematical model, the reduction in energy consumption achieved by coupling TES with the air conditioning system varied between 10.6% and 1.3%.