Comparative study of different paradigms of evolutionary algorithm in the context of system optimization for solar desiccant cooling

Solar desiccant cooling is new air-conditioning approach that can make use of solar energy to provide the conditioned air directly, together with full outdoor air provision. This system can handle the space loads and achieve good indoor air quality simultaneously. It is necessary to have system optimization for the overall year-round performance according to the local climatic and loading changes. The objective of optimization is to maximize the solar fraction against the involvement of auxiliary electric heating. This is a constrained optimization problem since the room temperature should be maintained within a comfortable range. Evolutionary algorithm (EA) is effective in handling the constrained, nonlinear and multidimensional engineering problems like this case. In this paper, comparative study among the three major paradigms of EA was carried out, in order to evaluate a suitable approach for the current engineering application with demanding computational function calls.