Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes, 4th Edition

Part II

Applications

Part I was concerned with the fundamental concepts and laws that determine the operation of solar process components and systems, the formulation of working equations for collectors and other components, and economics. With this background established, we proceed to discussions of applications of solar energy to meet various energy needs. There is substantial emphasis on applications to buildings for heating, hot water, and cooling by active and passive processes.

Much of Part II is qualitative and descriptive, although most of the chapters include results of quantitative performance calculations and/or measurements and economic evaluations. The objectives are to illustrate what applications have been made, show some of those that may be possible, and cast these applications in a quantitative framework where possible. Practical problems arising with the applications are noted.

Chapter 12 deals with active and passive water heating systems and covers many aspects of the most widespread of all modern solar processes. The extension of water heating practice to larger systems for active space heating is described in Chapter 13. Chapter 14 treats thermal aspects of passive heating processes, that is, the engineering part of the combined engineering and architectural problem of designing buildings to admit and use solar radiation. Chapter 15 concerns cooling processes operated by solar radiation.

The next three chapters are on applications that are usually made on ...