Europe has a course to zero emissions by 2050, with a strong emphasis on energy sector. Due to climatic conditions in Latvia, district heating (DH) plays an important role in the energy sector. One of the solutions to achieve the set goals in DH is to introduce emission-free technology. Therefore, the popularity of installation of large-scale solar collector plants continues to increase in DH in Europe. The first large-scale solar collector field in the Baltic States was installed in 2019. Solar collector active area is 21 672 m2 with heat storage water tank 8000 m3. The article shows the first operation results of this system and evaluates influencing factors. The results of the analysis show that system productivity is mainly demanded by solar radiation, and the strongest correlation between these parameters were established in May. The highest correlation between ambient air temperature and produced thermal energy is reached when ambient air temperature is between 7 °C to 15 °C and production process has not been externally regulated. The temperature difference between flow and return temperatures of the heat carrier affect solar collector performance minimally and strong correlation was not observed.
Solar energy transformation technologies are increasingly being used worldwide in the district heating sector. In the Baltic states, only one district heating company has implemented a large-scale solar collector field into its thermal energy production system, which is analyzed within this research. In this study, we analyzed the first year operation of the solar field, solar collector efficiency, and several influencing factors, i.e., ambient air temperature, heat carrier flow, and the temperature difference between the supply and return heat carrier temperatures. The study includes collecting and compilation of the data, analyzing influencing factors, and data analysis using the statistical analysis method. In addition, the research presents a simplified multi-regression model based on the actual performance of a large-scale solar field, which allows for forecasting the efficiency of solar collectors by taking into account the main operational parameters of the DH system. The results show that solar energy covers around 90% of the summer heat load of a particular district heating system. However, they also show room for improvements in producing all the necessary heat in the summer using solar energy. The regression analyses show that the most significant correlation between all parameters examined was obtained in May, reaching R2 = 0.9346 in solar field efficiency evaluation. This is due to several suitable conditions for solar energy production, i.e., placing solar collectors at an angle for them to be the most productive, having enough space in the storage tank, and the demand for thermal energy being still higher than in the summer months.
The article deals with the problem facing Latvian inventors in how to develop the idea to a real product. There are often cases where innovative ideas “migrate” from original inventors to other inventors, when they turn to them to seek support for developing and supporting the idea. The main components of the guidelines are the establishment of a patent application and, in general, a description of the entire patent acquisition process and the creation of a life cycle analysis using the SimaPro software. The article is intended primarily for the development of environmentally friendly inventions, which is why the life cycle analysis is one of the main components of the article, to make it possible to conclude whether the production and use of the new product will not result in a higher “ecological footprint” than previously used technologies, paying particular attention to the inventor stage in order to accurately develop a life-cycle analysis. The article does not only explore the necessary theoretical knowledge of the realisation of the idea to the product, but also looks at the pilot case, a practical example of an innovative “dust co-firing burner” compared to the conventional natural gas burner. The life-cycle analysis compares the following steps: manufacture of plants, transportation of plants and special emphasis on the combustion phase of fuels, three scenarios are examined: a natural gas burner burning natural gas, a dust burner in which natural gas is co-incinerated and fine wood particles − dust and a dust burner burning. biomethane and wood dust. The use of such an installation would not only reduce emissions from the replacement of natural gas by wood dust, but also allow energy companies to work more effectively, as it would be possible to regulate the proportion of different fuels depending on demand, because the fuels have different heat of combustion. The article establishes a methodology to analyse the quality and implementation of inventions in response to the following key questions: − how to identify original ideas and how to protect authors from the migration of ideas; − how to collect and analyse the risks associated with migration of ideas; − how to use life cycle analysis for the assessment of the “ecological footprint” of the invention.
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