Experimental Study of Hybrid Solar Air Conditioning System in Iraq

In this paper, an experimental study of the thermal performance for hybrid solar air conditioning system was carried out, to investigate system suitability for the hot climate in Iraq. The system consists of vapor compression unit combined with evacuated tube solar collector and liquid storage tank. A three-way valve was installed after the compressor to control the direction flow of the refrigerant, either to the storage tank or directly to the condenser. The performance parameters were collected by data logger to display and record in the computer by using LabVIEW software. The results show that the average coefficient of performance of hybrid solar air conditioning system (R=1) was about 2.42 to 2.77 and the average power consumption was about 1.1 to 1.12 kW when the ambient temperature was about 34.2 to 39.7 ˚C, while the average coefficient of performance of conventional system (R=0) was about 3.23 and the average power consumption was about 1 kW when the ambient temperature was about 30.8 to 34.3 ˚C. It can be concluded that the use of the hybrid solar system in Iraq with its current form could not be saved electricity.