Absorption chillers are one of the most used equipment in industrial,
commercial, and domestic applications. For the places where high cooling is
required, they are utilized in a network to perform the cooling demand. The
main objective of the current study was to find the optimum operating
conditions of a network of steam absorption chillers according to energy and
economic viewpoints. Firstly, energy and economic analysis and modeling of
the absorption chiller network were carried out to have a deep understanding
of the network and investigate the effects of operating conditions. Finally,
the particle swarm optimization search algorithm was employed to find an
optimum levelized total costs of the plant. The absorption chiller network
plant of the Marun Petrochemical Complex in Iran was selected as a case
study. To verify the simulation results, the outputs of energy modeling were
compared with the measured values. The comparison with experimental results
indicated that the developed model could predict the working condition of
the absorption chiller network with high accuracy. The economic analysis
results revealed that the levelized total costs of the plant is 1730 $/kW
and the payback period is three years. The optimization findings indicated
that working at optimal conditions reduces the levelized total costs of the
plant by 8.5%, compared to the design condition.