Cooling with heat is hot. Demand for cooling often coincides with the supply of solar heat. This makes thermally driven chillers (TDC's) in combination with solar collectors interesting for improving the energy efficiency of comfort cooling. Several TDC's are already available on the market. Only small scale (comfort) TDC's for applications in dwellings are not commercially available yet. This is why the Energy research Centre of the Netherlands (ECN) developed a prototype adsorption chiller, based on silica gel water, with a nominal cooling capacity of 2.5 kW. This paper will explain the working principle of the water-silica adsorption chiller, and will summarize executed measurements and their results. These results show that the choice of water and silica is successful and that the technology is ready to be commercialised
