Due to the environment degradation and threats of the climate change, how to develop the technologies to use renewable energy and improve current energy systems to meet the increasing demand of human activities instead of using fossil fuels are amongst hot issues that being discussed nowadays. Due to the specific weather condition, district heating, which contains space heating and domestic hot water, is needed in Sweden. Solar energy is the most potential and environmental friendly energy resource. It can be utilized in many different aspects. The profitability of building solar heating plant for producing heat to supply the district heating in Sweden was discussed in the thesis. In order to achieve the result, central solar heating plant and solar combisystem were discussed. Information was collected from “Sciencedirect”, some related companies and institutions websites, and etc. Very few solar radiations are available during winter in Sweden, while the demands of district heating are the highest. During summer time, a lot of cities in Sweden can use the industrial waste heat to cover the district heating load, and in some cities where there is no industrial waste heat can operate biomass combined heat and power (CHP) plant to cover the heating load. Combined solar-biomass heating plant could improve the efficiency of biomass heating plant and reduce the unnecessary heat losses. Solar combisystem has a relatively high cost and complex system. The system which is able to supply some hot water for washing machine may have a good future, due to the possibility that the price of electricity in Sweden increases. Large-scale solar heating plants are less attractive in Sweden due to the existence of industrial waste heat and CHP plant that supplied by biomass. Combined solar-biomass heating plant would be a good system to build if there is no available industrial waste heat and biomass heating plant is used to supply the district heating. Due to the current electrical price and the cost of combisystem, it is not that attractive to build this system. In the coming future, if the transportation cost and the price of biomass itself become too high to make the CHP plant no longer cost effective, and the price of the electricity become high, the solar energy will make more contribution to the district heating in the coming future.

In United Arab Emirates (UAE), a huge proportion of electrical energy consumed in buildings is used to run air conditioning equipments. This is because UAE’s climate is characterized by very high ambient temperatures and high humidity, especially during summer periods. There is need to promote air conditioning systems that are run by renewable energy based power because of the environment threats and energy security negative issues associated with conventional fossil fuel – energy powered systems. The huge buildings’ cooling loads occur during periods of high solar insolation; this creates a huge potential of using solar powered cooling systems for air conditioning applications. However, the solar air conditioning systems still face a number of challenges in UAE which include; the availability of cheap electricity from fossil fuel resources and lack of government incentives to promote renewable energy resources. In order to understand the potential of applying solar cooling systems for air conditioning applications versus conventional systems, there was a need to experimentally and/or theoretically evaluate the performance of pilot solar cooling systems in UAE.      In this project, the performance of a 10 TR solar cooling system in Ras Al Khaimah (RAK) Emirate of UAE was evaluated by both experiment and theoretical simulation. TRNSYS, a transient – systems simulation software that was developed by Solar Energy Laboratory – University of Winsconsin, was used for the purpose of the theoretical simulations of the system. The solar cooling absorption equipment used for this study is an R&D system that was developed by CSEM – uae in RAK for the purpose of assessing the potential of applying solar cooling systems in UAE. The solar cooling system is based on absorption chilling technology run by hot water produced by a field of evacuated tube solar collectors. Experimental results were compared with TRNSYS – theoretical simulations results and areas of possible improvements in the solar cooling system were recommended. Results of the study show that the solar cooling system runs with a COP in the range of 0.60 – 0.80, with an average COP of 0.70. It was also observed that the inlet cooling and hot water temperatures to the absorption chiller have a huge impact on the performance of the solar cooling system. A need to isolate the absorption chiller hot water circuit from the hot water stratified tank by incorporation of a heat exchanger between the chiller and the stratified tank was also identified. This will help to improve the degree of stratification during the operation of the solar cooling system. Theoretical performance evaluation of the system using a typical TMY2 weather data shows that the system can meet its cooling requirement for at least eight (8) months of the year. In conclusion, this study has indicated that solar cooling for air conditioning application in UAE has a huge potential. However, further research is necessary to enable improvement of the performance of solar cooling systems and to assess the possibility of commercialization of such systems.

Solar energy replacing conventional non-renewable energy has been widely implemented around the world. Currently, one of the most challenging problems is how to improve the efficiency of producing solar energy. Before installing solar panels, assessing where solar panels should be placed can significantly benefit panel performance. This study aims to conduct a site selection analysis for solar panel installation using Geographical Information Systems (GIS). The University of Waterloo main campus and the City of Waterloo were selected as study areas for micro-scale and macro-scale, respectively. The focus of the micro-scale analysis is on building rooftop installations, while the macro-scale analysis considers ground-mounted installation at the city-level. Knowledge about solar gains incident on different land cover types (e.g., urban and farmland) is useful for assessing potential solar energy installation sites in a local area. In this study, Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) data were applied to automatically derive accumulated solar radiation energy under clear-sky and overcast conditions at the micro-scale level from which ideal sites for solar panel placement on building rooftops were determined. Macro-scale solar radiation maps were based on Digital Elevation Model (DEM) data using ArcGIS software. Optimal ground-mounted solar panel installation sites were determined using a multi-criteria analysis approach that considered various environmental and socioeconomic factors. A questionnaire survey was distributed to select solar power companies in Southern Ontario to assess current solar panel installation practices, which were then used to better inform and modify the GIS multi-criteria approach. Finally, a feasibility assessment was performed with ground truth information to verify selected sites.

In the previous decades, people raised the awareness of the shortage of fossil fuel in the coming forty to fifty years. Besides, the reduction of CO2 emission is paid attention. Among the renewable energies, solar energy has the highest potential to be the main energy source in the future to solve the mentioned problems. In the last few ten years, the technologies of solar energy were improved and used more widely as an energy source. The solar energy is used in several different ways. It can be used as heat energy for water heating or space heating. The solar thermal energy can be used with active or passive design. There are direct and indirect designs regardless the active or passive energy system. The efficient and the cost effectiveness are according to the designs of the systems. The places and the climate of the buildings where they locate are the main considerations of the system design. With understanding more about the differences of the existing solar energy systems, they can be applied in more efficient, cost effective and environmental friendly. Regardless the dimension of the system, solar energy is the trend of the energy source for heating and electric power. It is not only used in building, it can also used for producing hydrogen fuel cells which will be using in transportation.

No description available.

This thesis is a study of impinging jet PV/Thermal collectors. More specifically, the thesis deals with the development of a model for this type of collector and its validation. The model developed for this thesis consists of a series of energy balances at every layer of the collector. The transient effects due to thermal mass of the different layers were taken into account. The resulting differential equations were solved using the backwards Euler method in an iterative manner. The validation of the model was done using a prototype of the collector. The aperture area of the collector was 0.78m2 and the PV cells covered 0.27m2. The collector was tested on 8 different days between January 30th and March 31st 2010. The experiments were conducted with various weather conditions, and parameters (such as mass flow rate and inlet temperature). The data was taken every 0.5 seconds and averaged over 5 minutes. In general, the model was found to work very well. For March 31st, the total modeled heat gain for the day was found to be within 2.1% of the experimental data. The PV electrical energy was found to be within 4.4% of the experimental results. The model was also found to work well with longer time steps than 5 minutes. Furthermore, the model seemed to work relatively well without accounting for the transient effects due to thermal mass.

No description available.

The Savannah River Site (SRS), a Department of Energy facility, generated non-hazardous petroleum and radiological co-contaminated soils that did not have a disposal pathway. The purpose of this project was to generate treatment data and test the hypothesis that an engineered biological process could safely and efficiently remove petroleum co-contamination from radiological contaminated soil. Demonstration of the treatment would allow the soils to be disposed as low-level radiological materials. Although radiation and radiological contamination may, depending on the type and level, impact microbial activity and growth, the impact of low levels of radiation were not expected to impact the biodegradation of petroleum contaminated soils. Important parameters identified for successful biological treatment included oxygen mass transfer, bioavailability, temperature, microbiological capabilities, nutrients, and moisture. System design was based on a bioventing approach to control the supply of oxygen (air) based on petroleum contamination levels and type of soil being treated. Before bioremediation began, a bioreactor system was permitted, designed, constructed, and tested. An operating permit was obtained from SCDHEC, as were approvals required by the SRS. The design was based on bioventing principles and used a modified prefabricated skid-pan, which was constructed by SRNL. System operation included formulating a test plan, developing and using system sampling and monitoring methods, loading the system, starting up operations, obtaining results, modifying operation, and final disposal of the soil after the bioremediation goal was achieved. The PRCS bioreactor operated for 22 months in various configurations treating the contaminated soil to a final TPH concentration of 45 mg/kg. During operation, degradation of over 20,000 mg/kg of waste was accounted for through monitoring of carbon dioxide levels in the effluent. System operation worked best when soil temperatures were above 15 ?nd the pumps were operated continuously. The low level radiological contaminated soil was disposed in an engineered trench at SRS that accepts this type of waste. The project demonstrated that co-contaminated soils could be treated biologically to remove petroleum contamination to levels below 100 mg/kg while protecting workers and the environment from radiological contamination.

This paper describes an investigation into the fabrication of Al/ZnO:Al/CdS/CuInSe2/Mo/SLG thin-film solar cell. The absorber layer CuInSe2 films deposited by multisource elemental evaporation on Mo-coated soda lime glass at Tss=550¢J. Mo back metal contact and the front metal contact of Al were fabricated by magnetron sputtering. The ~800 Å CdS buffer layer on top of the CuInSe2 layer deposited by a chemical bath deposition (CBD) technique. The ZnO:Al window layer was grown by RF sputtering. Furthermore, we add Sb into CuInSe2 films to modify surface and grow smother surface of Cu-rich CuInSe2. We have fabricated the ZnO/CdS/CuInSe2 thin-film solar cell with efficiency. The open circuit voltage (Voc) is 0.32 V, the short circuit current (Isc) is 1.62 mA and fill factor (F.F.) is 33 % in our device. The junction ideality factor is h=3.40, it¡¦s meant that recombination current is the dominant current. So, it¡¦s essential to improve the quality of absorber layer CuInSe2 films and control the growth condition.

ITO/Si heterojunction solar cells fabricated by post annealing of ITO films were presented. The cells were obtained by first depositing ITO films at room temperature by rf magnetron sputter technique. The as-deposited film is amorphous and its sheet as low as 35 £[/¡¼ was obtained. The sheet resistance by post annealing the sample in vacuum at 300¢J 20min. reduced to 9.7 £[/¡¼. The diffraction peaks on (222) and (400) directions were observed by XRD analysis. In addition, the carrier concentration is increased from 3¡Ñ1020 cm-3 to 9¡Ñ1020cm-3. The average transmittance is 82% after annealing. The ideality factor of the heterojunction diode is 1.93. We believed that the performance of the ITO/Si cells is limited due to large series resistance and carrier recombination at interface.