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Description
With the need to address the world's growing energy demand, many new

alternative and renewable energy sources are being researched and developed. Many

of these technologies are in their infancy, still being too inefficient or too costly to

implement on a large scale. This list of alternative energies include biofuels,

geothermal power, solar energy,

With the need to address the world's growing energy demand, many new

alternative and renewable energy sources are being researched and developed. Many

of these technologies are in their infancy, still being too inefficient or too costly to

implement on a large scale. This list of alternative energies include biofuels,

geothermal power, solar energy, wind energy and hydroelectric power. This thesis

focuses on developing a concentrating solar thermal energy unit for the application

of an on-demand hot water system with phase change material. This system already

has a prototype constructed and needs refinement in several areas in order to

increase its efficiency to determine if the system could ever reach a point of

feasibility in a residential application. Having put additional control refining

systems on the solar water heat collector, it can be deduced that the efficiency has

increased. However, due to limited testing and analysis it is undetermined just how

much the efficiency of the system has increased. At minimum, the capabilities of the

research platform have dramatically increased, allowing future research to more

accurately study the dynamics of the system as well as conduct studies in more

targeted areas of engineering. In this aspect, the thesis was successful.
ContributorsDonovan, Benjamin (Author) / Rajadas, John (Thesis advisor) / Kannan, Arunachala (Committee member) / Rogers, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
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Description
The complicated, unpredictable, and often chaotic hot water usage pattern of typical households severely limits the effectiveness and efficiency of traditional solar hot water heater systems. Similar to large scale concentrating solar power plants, the use of thermal energy storage techniques to store collected solar energy as latent heat has

The complicated, unpredictable, and often chaotic hot water usage pattern of typical households severely limits the effectiveness and efficiency of traditional solar hot water heater systems. Similar to large scale concentrating solar power plants, the use of thermal energy storage techniques to store collected solar energy as latent heat has the potential to improve the efficiency of solar hot water systems. Rather than being used to produce steam to generate electricity, the stored thermal energy would be used to heat water on-demand well after the sun sets. The scope of this thesis was to design, analyze, build, and test a proof of concept prototype for an on-demand solar water heater for residential use with latent heat thermal energy storage. The proof of concept system will be used for future research and can be quickly reconfigured making it ideal for use as a test bed. This thesis outlines the analysis, design, and testing processes used to model, build, and evaluate the performance of the prototype system.

The prototype system developed to complete this thesis was designed using systems engineering principles and consists of several main subsystems. These subsystems include a parabolic trough concentrating solar collector, a phase change material reservoir including heat exchangers, a heat transfer fluid reservoir, and a plumbing system. The system functions by absorbing solar thermal energy in a heat transfer fluid using the solar collector and transferring the absorbed thermal energy to the phase change material for storage. The system was analyzed using a mathematical model created in MATLAB and experimental testing was used to verify that the system functioned as designed. The mathematical model was designed to be adaptable for evaluating different system configurations for future research. The results of the analysis as well as the experimental tests conducted, verify that the proof of concept system is functional and capable of producing hot water using stored thermal energy. This will allow the system to function as a test bed for future research and long-term performance testing to evaluate changes in the performance of the phase change material over time. With additional refinement the prototype system has the potential to be developed into a commercially viable product for use in residential homes.
ContributorsPetre, Andrew (Author) / Rajadas, John N (Thesis advisor) / Madakannan, Arunachalanadar (Committee member) / Rogers, Bradley (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015