Waste-heat driven ammonia-water absorption chiller for severe ambient operation

•Designed, fabricated and developed a waste-heat driven absorption chiller.•Novel desorber and absorber geometries for compact size and direct-coupling.•Demonstrated performance of the unit at severe ambient conditions of 52 °C.•System delivered 2.1 kW of cooling at a coefficient of performance of 0.30. A packaged ammonia-water absorption chiller using a waste-heat stream and operating at severe ambient conditions is developed and experimentally evaluated. The chiller is designed to provide 2.6 kW of cooling at an ambient temperature of 51.7 °C. The system is directly coupled to exhaust gas from a diesel generator to drive the absorption cycle. The absorber and condenser reject heat directly to ambient air. Direct coupling to the heat source and the ambient heat sink leads to reduced system size and minimization of parasitic electrical power required for coupling fluid pumps. The dimensions of the unit are: 0.66 m × 0.61 m × 0.48 m (L × W × H). An autonomous control system is also developed and demonstrated experimentally. System performance is measured at ambient temperatures of 40–52 °C, delivering cooling duties of 2.5–1.8 kW, with overall coefficients of performance (COPs) of 0.38–0.3. Performance limitations and areas for future development are discussed.