Trigeneration describes cogeneration systems that consume a fuel to deliver three energy supplies — electricity, heating, and cooling — using absorption refrigeration. Cold generation systems describe a trigeneration system that only generates cooling using absorption and mechanical compression cycles, and where there is no heat wasted at any time during the year. This means that the trigeneration systems only deal with base loads, with peaks of power, heating, and cooling dealt with by traditional technologies. In practice, absorption with trigeneration cycles has a similar thermodynamic efficiency to standard mechanical compression cycles using grid electricity. Nevertheless, trigeneration systems can be quite attractive when natural gas is cheap or the national grid electric production is insufficient/inefficient and/or expensive. Trigeneration systems require a higher investment and specialist knowledge of designers, installers, maintainers, and operators. Data centers would appear to be ideal candidates for trigeneration systems due to their high power and cooling demands. To be competitive, absorption systems should be used for the annual base load with mechanical compression systems used for the variable cooling load. Similar to other applications, themarket penetration of trigeneration for data centers has been low.This paper providesanoverviewof absorption refrigeration and discusses its potential application for data centers.
Citation: ASHRAE Transactions – Volume 121, Part 1, Chicago, IL
Product Details
- Published:
- 2015
- Number of Pages:
- 9
- File Size:
- 1 file , 2.4 MB
- Product Code(s):
- D-CH-15-024
