Sustainability performance of space-cooling technologies and approaches

Figures & data

Figure 1. Investigated cooling systems.

Figure 2. Basic vapor-compression cooling system schematic diagram.

Figure 3. Basic absorption cooling system schematic diagram.

Figure 4. Adsorption cooling system schematic diagram.

Figure 5. Ejector cooling system schematic diagram.

Figure 6. Elastocaloric regenerator cycle.

Figure 7. Electrocaloric regenerator cycle.

Figure 8. Magnetocaloric regenerator cycle.

Figure 9. Thermoacoustic refrigerator (left) standing wave (right) traveling wave.

Figure 10. Thermoelectric cooling system.

Figure 11. Thermionic cooling system.

Table 1. Main pros and cons of cooling cycles.

	VC	Thermally Driven	Emerging Systems
Pros	Simple operation Compact sizes High energy efficiency Largest market share	Can be driven by solar-thermal systems and waste heat with few modifications Low electrical energy consumption.	Few or no moving parts (i.e., low maintenance costs) Utilization of eco-friendly refrigerants.
Cons	Environmentally harmful conventional refrigerants High maintenance costs	High capital cost Low energy efficiency	High cost of material Low technology readiness level (TRL) Small cooling capacities

Table 2. Cooling technology sustainability parameters’ scale.

Cooling Technology Sustainability Parameter
Scalability	Maturity Level	Complexity
High (100%)	Very Mature (100%)	Low (80%)
Medium (60%)	Market Entry (50%)	Low-to-Moderate (60%)
Low (30%)	Research (10%)	Moderate (40%)
		Moderate-to-High (20%)
		High (10%)

Table 3. Sustainability score perspective weighting schemes.

Assessment Parameter	Balanced	Environment Dominant	Economic Dominant	Efficiency Dominant
Cooling COP	20%	5%	5%	40%
Scalability	10%	5%	20%	5%
Maturity Level	10%	5%	20%	5%
Working Material Environmental Friendliness	20%	40%	5%	10%
Complexity	10%	10%	10%	5%
Cost of Cooling Operation	10%	5%	25%	10%
Carbon Emissions	10%	25%	5%	5%
Power Consumption per Unit Cooled Volume	10%	5%	10%	20%

Figure 12. Sustainability performance of the investigated cooling cycles for different weighting schemes.

Table 4. Sustainability comparison of investigated cooling technologies (balanced).

Category	Cooling Technology	Cooling COP (WF=20%)	Scalability (WF=10%)	Maturity Level (WF=10%)	Working Material (Environmental Friendliness) ODP (10%) GWP (10%)	Complexity (WF=10%)	Cost of Cooling Operation ($/kWhc) (WF=10%)	Carbon Emissions (kg CO2 eq./kWhc) (WF=10%)	Power Consumption per Unit Cooled Volume (kWele/m^3) (WF=10%)	Overall Sustainab-ility Score (%)	Sources
VC	VC-R32	3.2	High	Very Mature	HFC Refrigerant	Low	0.055	0.129	0.031	64.95 ± 3.44	(Hwang et al. 2012; Mota-Babiloni et al. 2017)
	VC-R410A	3.3	High	Very Mature	HFC Refrigerant	Low	0.053	0.125	0.030	63.98 ± 3.48	(Heredia-Aricapa et al. 2020; Hwang et al. 2012)
	VC-R744	1.445	High	Very Mature	Carbon Dioxide	Low	0.122	0.286	0.068	52.71 ± 3.06	(de Paula et al. 2020; Kim and Kim 2002; Mohammadi and Powell 2020)
	VC-R22	3.77	High	Very Mature	HCFC Refrigerant	Low	0.047	0.110	0.026	58.25 ± 3.70	(Saleh et al. 2020)
	VC -R134a	3.6	High	Very Mature	HFC Refrigerant	Low	0.049	0.115	0.027	67.33 ± 3.62	(Bolaji and Huan 2012; Heredia-Aricapa et al. 2020)
	VC -RE170	4.06	High	Very Mature	Eco-friendly Refrigerant	Low	0.043	0.102	0.024	73.30 ± 3.83	(Bolaji and Huan 2012)
	VC-R510A	4.5	High	Very Mature	Eco-friendly Refrigerant	Low	0.039	0.092	0.022	76.77 ± 4.02	(Bolaji and Huan 2012)
Thermally-Driven	AB-H2O+LiBr	0.6–0.7 (SE), 0.9–1.2 (DE)	Medium (SE) Medium (DE)	Very Mature	Water/Lithium Bromide	High	0.271 (SE), 0.168 (DE)	0.635 (SE), 0.393 (DE)	0.150 (SE), 0.093 (DE)	42.12 ± 4.21 (SE) 45.27 ± 4.03 (DE)	(Ali, Noeres, and Pollerberg 2008; Modi, Mudgal, and Patel 2017; Riffat and Qiu 2004)
	AB-NH3+H2O	0.69	Medium	Very Mature	Ammonia/Water	High	0.255	0.599	0.142	42.43 ± 4.19	(Wei et al. 2014)
	AD-SG+H2O	0.4	Medium	Very Mature	Silica Gel/Water	Moderate-to-High	0.440	1.033	0.244	41.15 ± 4.25	(X. Dechang et al. 2014; Soni and Kumar Gaba 2019; D. Wang, Chua, and Ng 2004)
	AD-AC+EtOH	0.5	Medium	Very Mature	ACF/EtOH^1	Moderate-to-High	0.352	0.826	0.195	41.94 ± 4.20	(Boman et al. 2017)
	AD-AC+NH3	0.35	Medium	Very Mature	AC/NH3^2	Moderate-to-High	0.503	1.180	0.279	40.76 ± 4.27	(Boman et al. 2017)
	EJ	0.09–0.7	High	Market Entry	Refrigerants	Low-to-Moderate	0.440	1.033	0.244	35.13 ± 4.03	(Besagni, Mereu, and Inzoli 2016)
Emerging	TA-S	0.36	Low	Research	Air	Moderate	0.489	1.147	0.271	30.83 ± 1.55	(Babu and Sherjin 2017; Zolpakar, Mohd-Ghazali, and Hassan El-Fawal 2016)
	TA-T	1.02	Low	Research	Air	Moderate	0.173	0.405	0.096	36.03 ± 1.26	(Jin et al. 2016)
	MG	4-5	Low	Market Entry	N/A	Moderate-to-High	0.039	0.092	0.022	65.43 ± 2.74	(Govindaraju, Vilathgamuwa, and Ramanujan 2014)
	EL	4.2–8.5	Low	Research	N/A	High	0.028	0.065	0.015	75.00 ± 3.21	(Greco and Masselli 2020)
	ES	3.6	Low	Research	N/A	High	0.049	0.115	0.027	53.35 ± 1.98	(Qian et al. 2018)
	TE	0.38–0.45	Low	Market Entry	N/A	Moderate	0.419	0.983	0.233	35.31 ± 1.81	(Riffat and Qiu 2004; Zhao and Tan 2014)
	TT	3	Low	Research	N/A	Low-to-Moderate	0.059	0.138	0.033	53.62 ± 2.06	(Aimi et al. 2007; O’Dwyer et al. 2009)

Figure 13. Cooling COP impact on the overall sustainability score of the different investigated cooling systems’ categories.

Figure 14. Cost of cooling operation impact on the overall sustainability score of the different investigated cooling systems’ categories.

Figure 15. Carbon emissions impact on the overall sustainability score of the different investigated cooling systems’ categories.

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