Hybrid techniques to enhance solar thermal: the way forward

Abstract

Solar is one of the pillars for clean and environment friendly energy. The drawback of the solar is the interruption during the night and cloudy and rainy weather. This paper presents the author's experience on enhancing the solar thermal systems by integration techniques with either other energy resources or thermal energy storages (TES). The present works includes the hybrid solar drying through integration with thermal backup unit. The experimental results on hybrid drying showed enhancement of 64.1% for Empty Fruit Bunch, and 61.1% for chili pepper, compared with open solar mode drying. Secondly, solar water heating was proved to be sufficient to supply hot water during the day and night time by integration with TES. The experimented system was able to maintain the water hot up to the next morning. On large scale and industrial application, experimental results on modified inclined solar chimney had shown enhancement via integration with wasted flue gas. By this technique, the system was developed to operate 24 hours a day. The efficiency was enhanced by 100% in case of hybrid operation compared with solar mode operation. The research results are demonstrating that the integration techniques can contribute effectively in enhancing the performance of the thermal solar systems.

Thermal performance investigation of a mini natural circulation loop for solar PV panel or electronic cooling simulated by lattice Boltzmann method

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Studying the Formation of the Charging Session Number at Public Charging Stations for Electric Vehicles

“…Nowadays, an important trend in the industrial and transport development is an environmental concern and reduction of the technogenic load [1][2][3][4][5][6]. A wide range of strategies is implemented, including an improvement of traditional hydrocarbon fuels [4,7] and the use of renewable energy sources for power supply of the cities [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. In 2018, the share of renewable energy was 26% of the total amount of electric energy produced.…”