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This paper presents the performance study of a solar-powered continuous adsorption air-conditioning system with the working pair of silica gel and water. In order to make the adsorption system more suitable to use solar energy to supply cooling continuously during daytime, a new adsorption system without refrigerant valves is being developed in SJTU recently. By using this system, the problem such as pressure drop along refrigerant circuit can be resolved. The frequent switches of refrigerant valves can also be omitted. The daytime long simulation results (ranging from 6:00 to 18:00) demonstrate that the solar-powered adsorption system can supply a fairly steady cooling output about 5–8 kW with system COP being over 0.2 all the time. Based on the results, parametric study is also undertaken to optimize the design.

Based on the measured hot water volume for a dormitory building in Shanghai city, the characteristic of solar water heating system load is analyzed. The optimal angle of heat collector was solved by programming considering the monthly summation of auxiliary heat load with one year as the target function. The results show that the optimal angle depends on the heat collector area or solar fraction. In the specification range of 30–80%, the optimal angle is 36° when the solar fraction is the low value or high value; while the optimal angle is 40–41° when the solar fraction covers the medium value.