Experimental Analysis of a Polygeneration System: Assessment of the Thermal Sub-System

André Rodrigues, Ana I. Palmero-Marrero, João Soares, Szabolcs Varga and Armando C. Oliveira ()
Additional contact information
André Rodrigues: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Ana I. Palmero-Marrero: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
João Soares: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Szabolcs Varga: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
Armando C. Oliveira: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal

Energies, 2024, vol. 17, issue 7, 1-12

Abstract: In this paper, the experimental results of the thermal sub-system of a reliable and cost-effective polygeneration solar system are presented. This polygeneration system produces heating, cooling, and electricity from solar energy, which is used in an existing test building. Heat is generated in four evacuated tube solar collectors (ETCs). The heat may be used for space cooling through a variable geometry ejector (VGE) heat pump. In order to reduce the mismatches between generation and consumption, two thermal storage tanks were added. The performance of a new thermal storage, with 400 L, able to store both sensible and latent heat, was tested. The heating performances of the test building were assessed. Ejector cycle tests were also performed, and the variation of the cooling coefficient of performance ( COP ) was calculated for different flow rates. For heating, the results showed that the heat storage was capable of heating the test building for 8 h, with temperatures between 22 °C and 26 °C. All results showed that this polygeneration prototype could be capable of meeting the heating and cooling needs when applied to a real building.

Keywords: polygeneration; solar; ejector; thermal storage; cooling; heating (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/7/1606/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/7/1606/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jeners:v:17:y:2024:i:7:p:1606-:d:1365238

Access Statistics for this article

Energies is currently edited by Ms. Agatha Cao

More articles in Energies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().