Assessment of the solar cooling technologies using analytical hierarchical process

摘要

Purpose - Decreasing sources of fossil fuels has caused an increase in importance of the renewable energy resources and systems that directly utilize renewable energy are even more important. The purpose of the paper is to compare the most common solar cooling technologies against the most important requirements. Design/methodology/approach - A multi-criteria decision methodology, analytical hierarchical process, has been used to prioritize these technologies with respect to each other. Findings - The findings of this study are the priorities of selected solar cooling concepts against performance affecting criteria. The solar vapour adsorption cooling system has been found to be the optimum solar cooling concept with practically the highest performance number compared with the other cooling systems. Originality/value - This study can be used in the future development of solar cooling technologies to benefit from the best collective features of the specific technologies.