Tri-Sol (Building-Integrated, Three-in-One Solar) Technology Development

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ravi Gorthala
Keyword(s):  
Heat Pipe ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Building Envelope ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
Interior Space ◽  
Condenser Section ◽  
Fresnel Lenses ◽  
Linear Fresnel Lenses ◽  
Solar Technology

A unique solar technology that can be building-integrated, which harnesses both visible and infrared spectrums of solar radiation, utilizes direct and diffuse radiation to produce electricity and hot water, and delivers daylight, has been conceptualized. This technology is a three-in-one (named Tri-Sol), low/medium-concentration, building-integrated, skylight system for commercial buildings. However, this technology can be utilized for building facades and other building envelope components. A key component of the technology is linear Fresnel lenses. These lenses can be designed to be thin and light-weight. Sunlight, concentrated by the linear Fresnel lenses with a low-cost single axis tracker, focuses on a high-efficiency, thin Photo Voltaic (PV) strip that is in contact with a thermal absorber. Electricity produced by PV strips can be processed and distributed from an electric power management system. The thermal absorber houses a sealed heat pipe for cooling the PV strip and producing hot water. The water-cooled condenser section of the heat pipe is external to the skylight so that there is no issue of water leakage through the skylight. Hot water produced can be used for end-use, space heating, or absorption cooling. All diffuse light that cannot be concentrated by Fresnel lenses is delivered into the building interior space. A pre-prototype of Tri-Sol technology was designed and built at University of New Haven (UNH). Solar Testing and Training Laboratory (STTL) at UNH houses solar thermal collector equipment with a capability to perform Solar Rating and Certification Corporation (SRCC) tests. The Tri-Sol module was mounted on the SRCC test equipment at UNH and was tested outdoors to identify any issues or design enhancements.

scholarly journals Evaluation of a High-Performance Solar Home in Loveland, Colorado

2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (2) ◽  
pp. 226-234
Author(s):  
Robert Hendron ◽  
Mark Eastment ◽  
Ed Hancock ◽  
Greg Barker ◽  
Paul Reeves
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Building Envelope ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
Space Heating ◽  
Solar Water Heater ◽  
Water Heater ◽  
Solar Water

Building America (BA) partner McStain Neighborhoods built the Discovery House in Loveland, CO, with an extensive package of energy-efficient features, including a high-performance envelope, efficient mechanical systems, a solar water heater integrated with the space-heating system, a heat-recovery ventilator (HRV), and ENERGY STAR appliances. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Building Science Consortium conducted short-term field-testing and building energy simulations to evaluate the performance of the house. These evaluations are utilized by BA to improve future prototype designs and to identify critical research needs. The Discovery House building envelope and ducts were very tight under normal operating conditions. The HRV provided fresh air at a rate of about 35L∕s(75cfm), consistent with the recommendations of ASHRAE Standard 62.2. The solar hot water system is expected to meet the bulk of the domestic hot water (DHW) load (>83%), but only about 12% of the space-heating load. DOE-2.2 simulations predict whole-house source energy savings of 54% compared to the BA Benchmark (Hendron, R., 2005 NREL Report No. 37529, NREL, Golden, CO). The largest contributors to energy savings beyond McStain’s standard practice are the solar water heater, HRV, improved air distribution, high-efficiency boiler, and compact fluorescent lighting package.

scholarly journals Evaluation of a High-Performance Solar Home in Loveland, Colorado

Solar Energy ◽  
2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Hendron ◽  
Mark Eastment ◽  
Ed Hancock ◽  
Greg Barker ◽  
Paul Reeves
Keyword(s):  
High Performance ◽  
Energy Savings ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Building Envelope ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
Space Heating ◽  
Solar Water Heater ◽  
Water Heater ◽  
Solar Water

Building America (BA) partner McStain Neighborhoods built the Discovery House in Loveland, Colorado, with an extensive package of energy-efficient features, including a high-performance envelope, efficient mechanical systems, a solar water heater integrated with the space-heating system, a heat-recovery ventilator (HRV), and ENERGY STAR™ appliances. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Building Science Consortium (BSC) conducted short-term field-testing and building energy simulations to evaluate the performance of the house. These evaluations are utilized by BA to improve future prototype designs and to identify critical research needs. The Discovery House building envelope and ducts were very tight under normal operating conditions. The HRV provided fresh air at a rate of about 75 cfm (35 l/s), consistent with the recommendations of ASHRAE Standard 62.2. The solar hot water system is expected to meet the bulk of the domestic hot water (DHW) load (>83%), but only about 12% of the space-heating load. DOE-2.2 simulations predict whole-house source energy savings of 54% compared to the BA Benchmark [1]. The largest contributors to energy savings beyond McStain’s standard practice are the solar water heater, HRV, improved air distribution, high-efficiency boiler, and compact fluorescent lighting package.

Modeling of a Wellhead Heating Methodology With Heat Pipes in Coal Mines

2020 ◽  
Vol 143 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hongyang Zhang ◽  
Kewen Li ◽  
Lipeng Zhao ◽  
Lin Jia ◽  
Mohammed Kaita ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Heat Pipe ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Coal Mines ◽  
Heat Pipes ◽  
Heating System ◽  
Heat Pumps ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
Winter Period ◽  
Ground Source Heat Pumps

Abstract Many coal mines are located at the middle and high latitudes. In winter, coal mining facilities may be operated under the freezing conditions. Burning coal for hot water is usually used to heat up the facilities, which is not environmentally friendly and energy efficient. Currently, the ground source heat pumps and other new technologies have been applied for heating in coal mines and have achieved some success. However, the working characteristics and costs of these technologies are not suitable for the antifreeze at the wellhead. Heat pipe technology has the following advantages: automatic operation with the change of atmosphere temperature (AMT) and low cost of construction and maintenance, which can overcome the drawbacks of the aforementioned technologies. In this article, a heating system based on heat pipe technology has been designed and modeled. The system extracts heat from the shallow normal temperature zone (NTZ) to automatically heat the coal wellhead in winter. For the heating system, the effects of AMT, the temperature of NTZ, the frozen zone thickness (FZT), the thermal conductivity, and the heat pipe quantity (HPQ) on the heating performance have been modeled and investigated using comsol multiphysics. The modeling results have been analyzed and discussed. The modeling data showed that the system based on heat pipes could meet the antifreeze requirements for the designed system during the winter period. The wellhead heating system proposed in this article may achieve the purpose of replacing fossil energy with shallow geothermal energy.

Experimental Research on a Novel Solar Water Heating System by Using Loop Heat Pipe

2013 ◽  
Vol 724-725 ◽  
pp. 163-170
Author(s):  
Zhang Yuan Wang ◽  
Xiang Mei Zhang ◽  
Wan Sheng Yang ◽  
Zhi Wu Chen
Keyword(s):  
Heat Pipe ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Heating System ◽  
Hot Water ◽  
Loop Heat Pipe ◽  
Water Heating ◽  
Solar Water Heating ◽  
Solar Water ◽  
Evacuated Tubes ◽  
Solar Water Heating System

In this paper, a novel solar water heating system will be proposed by applying the loop heat pipe to a conventional split solar hot water system, which will have the characteristics of high efficiency, low cost, appearance appealing and building integration. Three types of the system, i.e., the system with evacuated tubes, with single flat-plate glazing cover, and without glazing, will be experimentally investigated and compared on the influence to the dynamic performance of the system. It was found that the system’s operating temperature increased significantly during the start-up stage and gently after until reach relatively constant. The instantaneous efficiency was found to be fluctuated, although it reached stable eventually during the operations for all three types. By using the moving average calculating method, every 10 minutes were applied for the calculation of the average efficiency which had a negative linear relation with the combined factor of (Tmean-Tamb)/I. In general, the solar system with evacuated tubes performed the best with the highest water temperature output, highest system efficiency and lowest heat loss coefficient among the three systems.

Linear Fresnel Lenses For Solar Technology Made Of Glass

1984 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vl. Jirka ◽  
M. Maly ◽  
B. Nebelek ◽  
A. Triska
Keyword(s):  
Fresnel Lenses ◽  
Linear Fresnel Lenses ◽  
Solar Technology

scholarly journals Design Analysis and Performance Evaluation of Heat Pipe Embedded Oil Cooler with Enhanced Staggered Fins

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 5598-5603
Keyword(s):  
Performance Evaluation ◽  
Heat Pipe ◽  
Circuit Design ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Heat Extraction ◽  
Cooling Circuit ◽  
Hydraulic Oil ◽  
Oil Cooler

Hydraulic coolers are most commonly preferred cooling source in industry. The progress in past few years have offered high efficiency and reliable hydraulic component, yet hydraulic cooling circuit design is often neglected part of development. One aspect of the hydraulic cooling circuit design is prevention of overheating hydraulic oil. Allowing oil temperature rise beyond particular limit can increase the power consumption and reduce the life of a system due to poor lubrication, higher internal leakage, higher risk of cavitation’s and damage component. Now-a-days shell and tube type oil coolers with water as the cooling medium are used as hydraulic oil cooler, these are extremely bulky and running cost is high hence it is needed to be replaced by another system that will be air cooled to make provision for lower space consumption and cost reduction. This paper discusses the design and development of innovative oil cooler heat extraction system using heat pipe. Designs of fins preferred are namely the straight fin system with fins projected outward in eight channels. The equipment developed is first model using Unigrafix Nx-8 and steady state thermal analysis of fins is done in Ansys workbench 16.0. A simple, compact, high efficiency, low cost device is developed, also a new technology of heat pipe embedded oil cooler is learnt in this present work. This paper discusses the performance of heat pipe embedded oil cooler in terms of LMTD, overall heat transfer coefficient and effectiveness. Further it discusses the performance evaluation of the straight fin setup.

Influence of MBE Growth Conditions on Dislocation Densities of GaAs/Ge Epilayers Grown on Silicon Substrates

1985 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 364-365
Author(s):  
K.M. Hones ◽  
P. Sheldon ◽  
B.G. Yacobi ◽  
A. Mason
Keyword(s):  
High Efficiency ◽  
Lattice Mismatch ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Growth Conditions ◽  
Nonradiative Recombination ◽  
Device Structure ◽  
Si Substrates ◽  
Transmission Electron ◽  
Dislocation Densities ◽  
Dislocation Type

There is increasing interest in growing epitaxial GaAs on Si substrates. Such a device structure would allow low-cost substrates to be used for high-efficiency cascade- junction solar cells. However, high-defect densities may result from the large lattice mismatch (∼4%) between the GaAs epilayer and the silicon substrate. These defects can act as nonradiative recombination centers that can degrade the optical and electrical properties of the epitaxially grown GaAs. For this reason, it is important to optimize epilayer growth conditions in order to minimize resulting dislocation densities. The purpose of this paper is to provide an indication of the quality of the epitaxially grown GaAs layers by using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to examine dislocation type and density as a function of various growth conditions. In this study an intermediate Ge layer was used to avoid nucleation difficulties observed for GaAs growth directly on Si substrates. GaAs/Ge epilayers were grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on Si substrates in a manner similar to that described previously.

Improvement of Ti/RuO2–IrO2 Anode Lifetime and Electrocatalytical Properties by Using an Eco-Friendly Thermal Decomposition Method Using Polyvinyl Alcohol as Solvent

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charlys Bezerra ◽  
Géssica Santos ◽  
Marilia Pupo ◽  
Maria Gomes ◽  
Ronaldo Silva ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Thermal Decomposition ◽  
Polyvinyl Alcohol ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Electrochemical Impedance ◽  
Pechini Method ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Charge Transfer Resistance ◽  
Transfer Resistance ◽  
Calcination Temperatures ◽  
Service Lifetime

<p>Electrochemical oxidation processes are promising solutions for wastewater treatment due to their high efficiency, easy control and versatility. Mixed metal oxides (MMO) anodes are particularly attractive due to their low cost and specific catalytic properties. Here, we propose an innovative thermal decomposition methodology using <a>polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)</a> as a solvent to prepare Ti/RuO<sub>2</sub>–IrO<sub>2</sub> anodes. Comparative anodes were prepared by conventional method employing a polymeric precursor solvent (Pechini method). The calcination temperatures studied were 300, 400 and 500 °C. The physical characterisation of all materials was performed by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy coupled with energy dispersive spectroscopy, while electrochemical characterisation was done by cyclic voltammetry, accelerated service lifetime and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Both RuO<sub>2</sub> and IrO<sub>2</sub> have rutile-type structures for all anodes. Rougher and more compact surfaces are formed for the anodes prepared using PVA. Amongst temperatures studied, 300 °C using PVA as solvent is the most suitable one to produce anodes with expressive increase in voltammetric charge (250%) and accelerated service lifetime (4.3 times longer) besides reducing charge-transfer resistance (8 times lower). Moreover, the electrocatalytic activity of the anodes synthesised with PVA toward the Reactive Blue 21 dye removal in chloride medium (100 % in 30 min) is higher than that prepared by Pechini method (60 min). Additionally, the removal total organic carbon point out improved mineralisation potential of PVA anodes. Finally, this study reports a novel methodology using PVA as solvent to synthesise Ti/RuO<sub>2</sub>–IrO<sub>2</sub> anodes with improved properties that can be further extended to synthesise other MMO compositions.</p>

Contradiction Analysis and Solution in the R&D of High-Power Solar LED Street Lamp Controller

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 12-19
Author(s):  
Zhengwang Xu ◽  
Wei Mei ◽  
Jiaqi Yu ◽  
Jiarui Zhang ◽  
Yuchun Yi ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Power Supply ◽  
High Efficiency ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Solar Panel ◽  
Battery Voltage ◽  
Supply Circuit ◽  
Led Light ◽  
Power Supply Circuit ◽  
Side Mode ◽  
Dual Power

As being restricted by factors such as cost, efficiency and size, the development of high-power solar LED street light controller is faced with plenty of difficulties. In case that a structure of two independent DC/DC is applied as the main circuit, it has to face problems such as large size and high cost; in case of applying the bidirectional BUCK/BOOST circuit, it requires change-over switches to control the solar panel and LED light. As being restricted by withstanding voltage, on-resistance and cost, a PMOS device cannot be used as the change-over switch of solar panel and LED light. However, when being used as a change-over switch, an NMOS device must apply the low-side mode under which the negative ends of the mentioned three parts are cut off. In the condition of applying the low-side mode, a differential circuit must be used to detect the voltage of the solar panel. Furthermore, in order to make sure batteries can still be regularly charged after wearing out in daylight, the controller must be supplied with power through a dual power supply circuit that can obtain power from both the solar panel and the battery. The demander has a requirement on extremely low standby power consumption of the product, and thus it is necessary to minimize the circuit that is live while working in standby mode. Methods: The bidirectional BUCK/BOOST circuit structure is applied to the main circuit to realize a higher change-over efficiency while giving considerations to both cost and size. The NMOS device, model IRFB4410ZPBF, with a price of about three yuan, is used as the switching device, and the low-side mode is applied, that is the switches inserted in between negative end of the solar panel or LED light and that of the DC/DC circuit. The low-cost rail-to-rail operational amplifier LM358 is used to form a differential amplification circuit for detecting the voltage of the solar panel. A XL1509-12E1 chip that only costs 0.88 yuan/pc is selected as the main change-over chip for the power supply, which has realized the highly-efficient and low-cost change-over of the power supply. A dual power supply circuit and a step-down protective circuit are designed for the XL1509-12E1 change-over chip. By comparing solar panel voltage with battery voltage, the solar panel booting circuit is realized. Only when solar panel voltage is higher than battery voltage, does the system program start to power it up for running, so that the outage of most of the circuits of the system under standby mode does not consume energy. Furthermore, the solar panel voltage detecting circuit, the solar panel booting circuit and several return difference functions are corrected during system debugging. Results: The circuit board of the entire controller features small size, low cost and high efficiency. It measures about 100*62*18mm in size, costs about 60 yuan, and the charge/discharge change-over efficiency reaches up to over 95%. The controller has many functions: it is capable of operating within a large scope, in which, solar panel voltage is subject to 15~50V, LED light voltage is subject to 15~60V, battery voltage is subject to 10~35V and battery-end charge/discharge current is 10A; it is capable of adapting to monocrystalline silicon/multicrystalline silicon/thin-film and many other kinds of solar panels, as well as lithium/lead-acid and many other kinds of batteries; it is capable of detecting the conversion of day and night, automatically controlling charging and discharging and automatically making adaptive adjustment according to seasonal variations; the current to be consumed during standby will be maintained below 3mA, and thus the power consumption is extremely low. Conclusion: By selecting the bidirectional BUCK/BOOST circuit structure, applying low-side mode for switching of solar panel and LED light, using a differential circuit to detect solar panel voltage, using a low-cost DC/DC chip to realize power supply change-over, designing a dual power supply circuit, introducing solar panel booting circuit and other hardware design, as well as MPPT algorithm, state recognition and control, return difference control and other software design, a solar LED street light control product featuring small size, low cost, high efficiency and multiple functions is successfully developed.

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