Hitachi Plant Technologies develops solar-activated air conditioning system

Hitachi Plant Technologies Ltd. has recently developed an environmentally friendly solar-activated air conditioning system employing its own developed solar energy collector. The system reduces consumption of fossil fuels and carbon dioxide emissions remarkably.

Hitachi Plant Technologies is actively expanding its marketing activities, targeting at local-air conditioning in buildings or district cooling facilities for the regions of the Mediterranean, the interior of North America, Western Asia and Australia, “Sunshine Belts” which are sufficiently exposed to huge amount of sunlight. The company expects to break in its sales up to 5 billions yen in fiscal year 2015.

Solar power is increasingly in focus as a source of renewable and sustainable energy, thus avoiding the use of fossil fuels. Hitachi Plant Technologies has considerable experience in a wide range of plants employing solar energy for power and heating.

Hitachi Plant Technologies combines this experience with its plentiful expertise in air conditioning, accumulated over many years, in the development of the solar-activated air conditioning system.

This system is designed to drive a refrigerator directly with thermal energy generated from the solar energy collector to obtain chilled water for air conditioning.

As the key to this system, Hitachi Plant Technologies developed its own original designed high-efficiency parabola trough-type solar energy collector. The collector is improved through design features such as its simple and easily-handled structure, and the use of computer simulations to develop a design for control of displacement of the focal point in the presence of wind and other factors.

Hitachi Plant Technologies supplies a total system incorporating the solar energy collector, as well as presenting proposals for combinations of energy-efficient technologies for air conditioning systems, and water treatment technologies.

This system also has application beyond air conditioning systems, and future development is expected to involve wider application in a variety of heat sources.

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Hitachi Plant Technologies' Solar Energy Collector (Photo: Business Wire)