Applications of Solar Energy: Energy Storage, Cooling, and Water Desalination

This paper presents the results of various applications of solar energy in the field of thermo-fluids engineering, specifically in the following 3 topics: energy storage, cooling, and water desalination. In the first part, the result of using PCM (phase change materials) for storage solar energy as sensible and latent energy in conjunction with nanoparticle-laden fluids is presented. It is seen that for medium-temperature range energy storage, the materials and geometry can be adjusted in order to tune the charging and discharging processes at much higher efficiencies. The second part of the paper presents results of low-cost cooling techniques which avoid the use of high-energy consuming VCR (vapor compression refrigeration) cycles, and instead use solar energy as the driving force, leading to more environmental friendly cooling solutions. In the third and final part of this paper, the solar energy-driven desalination process of membrane distillation has been presented in detail. Here, the main parameters of concern are the distillation flow rate as well as the overall GOR value (Gained Output Ratio). It is observed that solar-driven desalination processes can avoid the use of high grade energy (such as electricity) and can instead be operated using low grade energy source such as solar energy.