As solar heating systems become a commercial reality, greater efforts are now being employed to incorporate solar cooling components in order to obtain a complete solar heating and cooling system, and thus take advantage of the cost-effectiveness of year-round use of the solar equipment. The solar heating and cooling system design presented in this paper incorporates design considerations which...

Thermal modelling and optimal design of a solar absorption cooling system are presented, and hourly analysis is performed over the period of a year. Three design parameters are considered, then the Real Parameter Genetic Algorithm (RPGA) is applied to obtain the minimum total annual cost. The optimization results show that the solar cooling optimum configuration needs 1630 square meter collecto...

Solar energy can be converted directly into electric and thermal energy through photovoltaic cells and thermal collectors, respectively. However this conversion, in particular the photovoltaic, has a reduced efficiency. A solution proposed to increase this efficiency is with the hybrid solar structure, which consists in the junction of the photovoltaic panel and the thermal collector in a singl...

Application of solar collectors for hot water supply, space heating, and cooling plays a significant role in reducing building energy consumption. For conventional solar collectors, solar radiation is absorbed by spectral selective coating on the collectors' tube/plate wall. The poor durability of the coating can lead to an increased manufacturing cost and unreliability for a solar collector op...

In this paper, an economic study of solar heat pumps and an investigation of differences between solar heat pumps and conventional heat pumps—based on their performances and energy consumption—are conducted for a residential apartment located in Austin, Texas, USA. Heating in the apartment is provided via a solar heat pump during the cold months of a year. Solar collectors are used to meet the ...

Energy, exergy and exergoeconomic (3E) evaluation are performed to assess the performance of a NH3/H2O cycle integrated with parabolic trough solar collectors (PTSC). To provide continuous electricity produced by generator when solar beam radiation is insufficient a stabilizer temperature subsystem is utilized. The major thermodynamic parameters and climate conditions variations are selected to...

The Rab1-Nielsen formulas are used to make predictions for solar pond operations for four locations situated in different solar insulation zones in Iran. The inputs to the computer program for determining the temperature variation at the bottom of the pond are the total insulation (corrected for cloudiness). ambient temperature, insolating layer thickness, convection layer thickness and load. T...

Solar energy is a good option among renewable energy resources due to its easy availability and abundance. The simplest and most efficient way to utilize solar energy is to convert it into thermal energy and this can be done with the help of solar collectors. The thermal performance of such collectors is poor due to less heat transfer from the collector surface to air. In this work, experimenta...

New selective coating materials are developed and used in advanced solar collector and absorber designs with improved efficiency. Cobalt and Copper sulfides nanoparticles are high interest for absorbers of solar thermal collectors due to their optical properties and high absorptance in the solar wavelength range (> 96%). In the present work, Cobalt and Copper sulfides nanoparticles were synthes...

Relative to solar water heaters, solar air heaters have received relatively little investigation and have resulted in few commercial products. However, in the context of a humidification-dehumidification (HDH) desalination cycle, air heating accounts for advantages in cycle performance. Solar collectors can be over 40% of an air-heated HDH system’s cost; thus, design optimization is crucial. Be...