Hitachi Plant Technologies Ltd. has developed a solar-activated air-conditioning system that employs its own developed solar energy collector. The company says the product will be marketed toward air conditioning in buildings or district cooling facilities for the regions of the Mediterranean, the interior of North America, Western Asia and Australia.
This system is designed to drive a refrigerator directly with thermal energy generated from the solar energy collector to obtain chilled water for air conditioning. As the key to this system, Hitachi Plant Technologies says it developed a high-efficiency parabolic-trough solar energy collector.
The collector is improved through design features such as its simple and easily handled structure and the use of computer simulations to develop a design for control of displacement of the focal point in the presence of wind and other factors, according to the company.
SOURCE: Hitachi Plant Technologies