Abstract
Solar air collectors have various applications: on the one hand, they can be used for air heating in cold seasons; on the other hand they can be used in summer to evacuate the warm and polluted air from residential, offices, industrial, and commercial buildings. The paper presents experimental results of a solar collector air, under the climatic conditions of the Southeastern Europe. The relationships between the direct solar irradiation, the resulting heat flow, the air velocity at the outlet, the air flow rate, the nominal regime of the collector and the efficiency of conversion of solar energy into thermal energy are all highlighted. Thus, it was shown that after a maximum 50 min, solar air collectors, with baffles and double air passage can reach over 50% efficiency for solar irradiation of 900–1000 W/m2. The article also presents a mathematical model and the results of a computational program that allows sizing solar collectors for the transfer of air, with the purpose of improving the natural ventilation of buildings. The article is completed with case studies, sizing the area to be covered with solar collectors, to ensure ventilation of a house with two floors or for an office building. In addition, the ACH (air change per hour) coefficient was calculated and compared.
Highlights
In the context that solar energy, as a renewable source of energy, is used in very small proportion, specialists’ research must focus on improving the operating efficiency of solar heat collectors and extending their domains of applications
The improvement in the energy performance of solar heat collectors is important, both for their use in space heating, and in natural ventilation systems integrated in the technology of building passive houses [7,8]
This article presents a computational model for the ventilation of living spaces with solar panels, in order to determine the surface to be covered with solar air collectors, with different solar radiation assumptions, correlated with the air velocity in the panel and the variation of the temperature supposed to be achieved
Summary
In the context that solar energy, as a renewable source of energy, is used in very small proportion (only 2%), specialists’ research must focus on improving the operating efficiency of solar heat collectors and extending their domains of applications. This article presents a computational model for the ventilation of living spaces with solar panels, in order to determine the surface to be covered with solar air collectors, with different solar radiation assumptions, correlated with the air velocity in the panel and the variation of the temperature supposed to be achieved. This model was applied in two case studies: for a house with about 200 m3 of living space, and for an office building with about 1000 m3 of workspace. The numerical application can be used for sizing solar panels for the ventilation of residential, commercial, or industrial areas
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