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A solar still is a simple way of distilling water, using the heat of the Sun to drive evaporation from humid soil, and ambient air to cool a condenser film. Two basic types of solar stills are box and pit stills. In a pit still, impure water is contained outside the collector, where it is evaporated by sunlight shining through clear plastic.
Inherent design problems face thermal solar desalination projects. First, the system's efficiency is governed by competing heat and mass transfer rates during evaporation and condensation. [1] Second, the heat of condensation is valuable because it takes large amounts of solar energy to evaporate water and generate saturated, vapor-laden hot ...
In a solar-thermal power plant, like those of The Solar Project or the PS10 plant in Spain, a wide field of heliostats focuses the Sun's power onto a single collector to heat a medium such as water or molten salt. The medium travels through a heat exchanger to heat water, produce steam, and then generate electricity through a steam turbine.
A solar power tower, also known as 'central tower' power plant or 'heliostat' power plant, is a type of solar furnace using a tower to receive focused sunlight. It uses an array of flat, movable mirrors (called heliostats) to focus the sun's rays upon a collector tower (the target).
The efficiency of a concentrating solar power system depends on the technology used to convert the solar power to electrical energy, the operating temperature of the receiver and the heat rejection, thermal losses in the system, and the presence or absence of other system losses; in addition to the conversion efficiency, the optical system ...
A PV solar-powered pump system has three main parts - one or more solar panels, a controller, and a pump.The solar panels make up most (up to 80%) of the system's cost. [citation needed] The size of the PV system is directly dependent on the size of the pump, the amount of water that is required, and the solar irradiance available.
NASA patented a type of solar-powered Stirling engine on August 3, 1976. It used solar energy to pump water from a river, lake, or stream. [1] The purpose of this apparatus is to “provide a low-cost, low-technology pump having particular utility in irrigation systems employed in underdeveloped arid regions of the earth…[using] the basic principles of the Stirling heat engine“.
The hybridization of solar photovoltaic with pumped storage is beneficial in rising the capability of the two plant combined because the pumped hydroelectric plant can be used to store the high but unstable amount of electricity coming from the solar PV, making the water basin acting as a battery for the solar photovoltaic plant. [46]