• Energy Research

Abstract A building integrated cooling facade is proposed in this paper. It is a fan-assisted system that consists of two vertical plenums. The first plenum was made of black aluminium transpired plate and a sandtile wall, while the second plenum is formed by the sandtile wall and the building wall. The aluminium plate served as a solar collector and the sandtile wall was an evaporative pad. The reverse side of the sandtile wall that contacted with the air in the second plenum was coated with a water-resistant layer, hence the air was cooled without adding any moisture into it. The facade cooling performance under various operating conditions is investigated through experiment and theoretical analyses. It is found that inlet water temperature is the key factor affecting the cooling performance. In terms of cooling efficiency, the energy consumption to generate 1 kW of cooling that cooling the air to 293 K is only 0.52 W, which is similar to the amount of energy required by some of the solar indirect evaporative cooling and desiccant cooling systems.

A dual-mode seasonal solar thermochemical sorption energy storage system using working pair of expanded graphite/SrCl2-NH3 was constructed and investigated. Solar thermal energy is transformed into chemical bonds in summer, and the stored energy is released in the form of chemical reaction heat in winter. Two working modes are performed to produce heat with expected temperature according to the different ambient temperatures in winter. The direct heating supply mode is adopted at a relatively high ambient temperature. The effective energy storage density is higher than 700kJ/kg and the corresponding system COP is 0.41 when the heat output temperature and ambient temperature are 35oC and 15oC, respectively. The specific heating power increases with the decrease of heat output temperature for a given ambient temperature. The temperature-lift heating supply mode is adopted to upgrade the heat output temperature at a low ambient temperature below 0oC. It can produce heat with a temperature above 70 oC although the ambient temperature is as low as -15oC. It is desirable to further improve the system performance using low mass ratio and high global conversion. Experimental results showed the advanced dual-mode thermochemical sorption energy storage technology is feasible and effective for seasonal solar thermal energy storage.

The membrane-based liquid desiccant dehumidification system has high energy efficiency without the traditional liquid system carry-over problem. The performance of such a system strongly depends on solution's temperature and concentration, which have direct relationship to the solution surface vapour pressure. Compared with the pure liquid desiccant solution, the mixed liquid desiccant solution has lower surface vapour pressure, better system performance and lower material cost. In this paper, the performance of a flat-plate membrane-based liquid desiccant dehumidification system with the mixed solution (LiCl and CaCl2) is investigated through theoretical and experimental approaches. A mathematical model is established to predict the system performance, while the electrolyte non-random two-liquid (NRTL) method is applied to calculate the mixed solution properties. The influences of the solution mixing ratio, temperature Tsol and concentration Csol are evaluated, and it is found that the regeneration heat Qreg can be dramatically reduced by either applying a high concentration solution or increasing CaCl2 content in the mixed solution. Compared with the pure LiCl solution system, the mixed solution system COP can be improved up to 30.23% by increasing CaCl2 content for a 30% concentration solution. The optimum mixing ratio varies with the solution concentration. For the mixed LiCl-CaCl2 solution, the system highest COPs appear at the mixing ratios of 3:1, 2:1 and 1:1 for 20%, 30% and 40% concentrations respectively.

Operating parameters of a membrane-based parallel-plate liquid desiccant dehumidification system are investigated in this paper. The liquid desiccant and air are in a cross-flow arrangement, and separated by semi-permeable membranes to avoid carry-over problem. A numerical model is developed to simulate the system performance, and validated by experimental and analytical results. Impacts of main operating parameters on the system performance (i.e. sensible, latent and total effectiveness) are evaluated, which include dimensionless parameters (i.e. solution to air mass flow rate ratio m^* and number of heat transfer units NTU), solution properties (i.e. concentration C_sol and temperature T_sol) and inlet air conditions (i.e. temperature T_(air,in) and relative humidity ?RH?_(air,in)). It is found that m^* and NTU are two of the most important parameters influencing the system effectiveness. Even though the system performance can be improved by m^*and NTU, its increasing gradient is limited when m^*and NTU exceed 1 and 4 respectively. Decreasing solution temperature does not make a great improvement to the system performance, however, increasing solution concentration is a good approach to enhance the latent effectiveness without influencing the sensible effectiveness. The system shows the broad adaptability in various weather conditions, and has the ability to provide relative stable state supply air.

Abstract Increasing energy conversion efficiency from sunlight to power is one of the key solutions for the world’s energy shortage and greenhouse gas reduction, but the conventional flat photovoltaic module without sun tracking mechanism has the low sunlight energy collection ability. This paper presents the state-of-the-art three-dimensional photovoltaic (3DPV) technology with high photovoltaic energy conversion efficiency, which is able to absorb off-peak sunlight and reflected light more effectively, thereby it can generate more power. At first, this paper is to catalogue and critique different 3DPV structures and models, as well as assess their characteristics. Afterwards, the main influence factors on the 3DPV structures and models including shape, height and spacing of the solar cells, latitude of the installation, optimal device design and shadow cast, are reviewed. Finally, the challenges and future technological developments of 3DPV structures and models are highlighted. This study demonstrated that the 3DPV technology can increase the captured sunlight approximately 15–30% in comparison with the conventional flat PV technology.

This study proposes and implements maximum power Point Tracking (MPPT) control on thermoelectric generation system using an extremum seeking control (ESC) algorithm. The MPPT is applied to guarantee maximum power extraction from the TEG system. The work has been carried out through modelling of thermoelectric generator/dc-dc converter system using Matlab/Simulink. The effectiveness of ESC technique has been assessed by comparing the results with those of the Perturb and Observe (P&O) MPPT method under the same operating conditions. Results indicate that ESC MPPT method extracts more power than the P&O technique, where the output power of ESC technique is higher than that of P&O by 0.47 W or 6.1% at a hot side temperature of 200 °C. It is also noted that the ESC MPPT based model is almost fourfold faster than the P&O method. This is attributed to smaller MPPT circuit of ESC compared to that of P&O, hence we conclude that the ESC MPPT method outperforms the P&O technique.

Thermoelectric (TE) technology is regarded as alternative and environmentally friendly technology for harvesting and recovering heat which is directly converted into electrical energy using thermoelectric generators (TEG). Conversely, Peltier coolers and heaters are utilized to convert electrical energy into heat energy for cooling and heating purposes The main challenge lying behind the TE technology is the low efficiency of these devices mainly due to low figure of merit (ZT) of the materials used in making them as well as improper setting of the TE systems. The objective of this work is to carry out a comprehensive review of TE technology encompassing the materials, applications, modelling techniques and performance improvement. The paper has covered a wide range of topics related to TE technology subject area including the output power conditioning techniques. The review reveals some important critical aspects regarding TE device application and performance improvement. It is observed that the intensified research into TE technology has led to an outstanding increase in ZT, rendering the use TE devices in diversified application a reality. Not only does the TE material research and TE device geometrical adjustment contributed to TE device performance improvement, but also the use of advanced TE mathematical models which have facilitated appropriate segmentation TE modules using different materials and design of integrated TE devices. TE devices are observed to have booming applications in cooling, heating, electric power generation as well as hybrid applications. With the generation of electric energy using TEG, not only does the waste heat provide heat source but also other energy sources like solar, geothermal, biomass, infra-red radiation have gained increased utilization in TE based systems. However, the main challenge remains in striking the balance between the conflicting parameters; ZT and power factor, when designing and optimizing advanced TE materials. Hence more research is necessary to overcome this and other challenge so that the performance TE device can be improved further.

The application of supercritical CO2 (sCO2) in power generation systems is getting attractive recently owing to high energy efficiency and compact component size, but there are big design challenges for turbines and com-pressors due to the supercritical fluid characteristics. In this paper, a novel turbomachinery design optimization framework, "Turbine-Delta h-Compressor" (T Delta hC) tool, is proposed to generate the optimal flow feature and ge-ometry. The T Delta hC tool based on sequential quadratic programming formulation extends the design parameter search spaces and compares the optimized turbomachinery geometries by coupling with genetic algorithm, its capability is demonstrated by three sCO2 systems with 100, 200 and 250 kW turbine output power under different operating conditions. It is found that the maximum turbine total-to-static efficiency of these systems is 86.99 % and the maximum compressor isentropic efficiency is 77.06 %. In the optimal design case, the system thermal efficiency could reach 33.43 %.