Solar driven cold rooms for industrial cooling applications

KRAMER GmbH, a German supplier for cold room construction, insulation technology and shopfitting with more than 80 years of company experience, and INDUSTRIAL SOLAR GmbH (ISG), a supplier of high-quality solar process heat systems for industrial applications, and the FRAUNHOFER INSTITUTE FOR SOLAR ENERGY SYSTEMS (ISE) are currently developing a standard solar driven cold room for industrial cooling applications. Within the recent EU co-funded project SOLERA, ISE and ISG had gathered experience in the successful operation of the solar cooling technology. Main components of the SOLERA demonstration system are a linear Fresnel collector providing the driving heat at temperatures up to 200 °C for two cascading ammonia water absorption chillers, which produce cold temperatures down to -12 °C, as well as ice storages for peak shifting. In the current project AgroKühl, which is co-funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research, a consortium of five partners, among them the company KRAMER GmbH and ISE, constructed a cold room, that will now be driven by a similar solar cooling system. Further technical details, operation experience and measurement data from the SOLERA demonstration system in 2011 as well as a description of the new system will be presented in the paper.