Advanced exergy analysis of an air conditioning system incorporating thermal energy storage

Air conditioning incorporating thermal storage, in which the cooling capacity needed for air conditioning is produced during the nighttime when the demand for air conditioning is small and then utilized to satisfy peak loads during the daytime, has received much attention recently. In this work, an air conditioning system consisting of a combination of LHTS (latent heat thermal storage) and VCR (vapor compression refrigeration) is analyzed with advanced exergy analysis. The analysis is performed based on splitting the exergy destruction into endogenous/exogenous and unavoidable/avoidable parts. The results show that all of the exergy destruction of the LHTS unit is endogenous, which indicates that the total exergy destruction of the LHTS unit is due only to its irreversibilities. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.