Hey was curious if anyone had any thoughts/opinions about this system. Seems pretty unique and cool (a small capacity absorption chiller) but also in a way too good to be true. http://www.purix.com/inspire/

The system is driven off solar thermal heat from a thermal collector using a hot water loop. Essentially only requiring 150W to drive the pump during the day and then the electrical load of whatever terminal device you have (fan coil, cassette, etc). So using heat versus electricity for cooling. In dry climates I think it would be a very beneficial system when there is not a huge latent load. 

The problem I see is that at night when solar thermal is not available the system COP is about .83 so pretty bad. It takes 3.1kW of heating to provide 2.5kW of cooling. The systems can be added together but in my mind even if the heating water was driven off a heat pump water heater it would still have a COP less than one. This could be dampened with thermal storage but still seems somewhat impractical to have a device that is so inefficient when the sun isn’t out.

Furthermore the heating water required is 60°C and goes up from there depending on ambient outdoor temp. So you’d probably need some electric boiler because most heat pumps can’t get that hot of water right?

We are looking into using the SANCO2 to accomplish this but we would probably need some “side-arm” to bump up the temp even more. Any thoughts on this?