Journal of Korean Institute of Architectural Sustainable Environment and Building Systems ISSN:1976-6483(Print) 2586-0666(Online) 한국건축친환경설비학회논문집

Absorption chiller-heaters have widely been used for cooling and heating in public buildings, due to government energy policy in Korea since 1980s. However, the sequence of operations for such absorption chiller-heaters with different capacity and efficiency has not been sufficiently studied under actual operational conditions. This study analyzed the effects of energy savings from the sequential controls of absorption chiller-heaters for a public office building using calibrated energy simulation with measured data in summer. As a result, it is found that the proposed sequential operations with a prorate load control of three absorption chiller-heaters is expected to save cooling energy (e.g., gas consumption) about 17% for the case-study building. Therefore, it is recommended that the sequential operations of absorption chiller-heaters should be coupled with equipment efficiency and capacity to effectively improve overall operational efficiency and save energy.