Solar Power Water Purifiers Claimed to be More Efficient

Access to clean water is one of the world's most pressing problems, but a team of University at Buffalo researchers has come up with a new take on an old technology that uses sunlight to purify water. They have invented a way of making the solar-powered purifiers more efficient than the conventional ones.

Attaining drinkable and clean water is a global problem, which needs to be addressed as efficiently as possible.  Conventional Solar Stills distill impure water using solar energy to evaporate, cool then collect the pure water. These Solar Stills are portable and economical since they do not need electricity to function. The researchers decided to improve the efficiency of the evaporation process and minimize the amount of loss of solar energy.

Led by associate professor of electrical engineering Qiaoqiang Gan, the team has created a device that uses black, carbon-dipped paper to produce fresh water with what is claimed to be near-perfect efficiency. The have developed a ‘solar vapour generator’ that cleans the water through evaporation process. They used insulating polystyrene foam and an absorbent paper coated in carbon black. The water gets absorbed by the paper and the sunlight gets absorbed by carbon black which is turned into heat. In this innovative method, about 88% of solar energy gets converted into heat and the researcher are aiming to convert 100% solar energy to improve the efficiency of the entire process.

In a solar still, seawater, dirty water, or even green leaves are set inside a transparent plastic container, which can be as simple as a polythene bag, and set out in the sun. The light heats the air inside the still, encouraging evaporation. The water vapor then rises, meets the cooler thin plastic, and condenses into liquid. This then trickles down the plastic and is collected into reservoirs to be poured off or sucked out with a straw. The problem is, though the process can be a literal life saver, it isn't very efficient.

The commercial solar stills produce only 1 to 5 litres of water; however, the new and improved solar stills can produce 3 to 10 litres of water per day. Associate professor of electrical engineering, Qiaoqiang Gan, has stated that the money required to produce water can be as cheaper as $1.60 per square meter, which is a lot less than the systems which require optical concentrators.

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Buffalo still is a surprising advance on previous devices. Before, the theoretical upper limit was 1.68 liters (56.8 oz) per hour per square meter, but the new technology manages 2.2 liters (74.4 oz).

The team is now waiting for investors to come forward to commercialize the device. It will certainly be a boon to those areas which do not have effortless access to clean water.

Related Articles:

https://www.reonenergy.com/our-projects/

https://solar-energy-in-pakistan.blogspot.com/2019/04/solar-panel-efficiency-reduces-with-air.html

https://newatlas.com/solar-still-perfect-efficiency/54492/

Solar Panel Efficiency Reduces with Air Pollution

In certain parts of the globe, the accumulation of particulate matter on solar panels can curtail energy output by more than 25 percent, according to a new study. Pakistan’s push for solar energy which is reported to increase this year can be hindered by air pollution. In a new study, it has been found that dust and particulate matter (PM) are attributed to reduce the energy generation of solar power systems to around 17% to 25% annually.

Mike Bergin, Duke University professor, led the study that nearly half of the reduction came from dust and particles which were found on the surface of solar panels and formed a physical barrier to the light entry. The reduction came from ambient haze from air pollution, which is a condition better known as solar dimming. Bergin said that the study revealed that improving air quality can lead to a big improvement in solar energy production. He added that cleaning panels would not be enough to increase the power generation.

Dust can affect the solar panel output significantly, and this was also reiterated in a 2016 study in Baghdad, which found around 18.74% decline in efficiency of solar modules which were left uncleaned for around a month.

Losses from air pollution have received less attention. In a 2013 study, researchers explored the power output of around ten PV systems in Singapore during a haze episode. The study reported that the system output plummeted due to lower air quality by around 25% over a 10-week-period.

According to Andre Nobre, lead author and head of operations at the Cleantech Solar in Singapore, the production on a particular day reduced to a staggering 50%. He observed that for a city like Karachi, there would be an added effect of soiling on the panels as the city is much drier and dirtier.

The Bergin study is one of the first which measures the combined impact of ambient particles and the deposited matter. Bergin and his colleagues have analyzed dust on the solar panels and have tracked energy production pre-and-post cleaning. The study found that power generation increased by around 50% after each cleaning.

Nobre said that air pollution was a factor in solar power plant business decisions, for those companies who have solar project across Asia. He added that developers need to evaluate the field when signing power purchase agreements with clients who had facilities in highly polluted zones.

Related Articles:

https://solar-energy-in-pakistan.blogspot.com/2019/04/magic-alloy-set-to-make-solar-power.html

https://www.livescience.com/59665-air-pollution-lowers-solar-panel-efficiency.html

https://www.quora.com/Does-air-pollution-affect-the-efficiency-of-solar-energy-generation

x

Magic Alloy Set to Make Solar Power Cheaper

The University of Michigan researchers have developed concentrator photovoltaics, a new wave of solar cells and a semiconductor alloy. The alloy has the power of capturing the near infrared light that is positioned on the edge of the visible light spectrum.

The researchers claim that the new formulation is easier to manufacture, compatible with current gallium arsenide semiconductors and reduces costs by over 25%. Previous generation concentrator photovoltaics gather and focus sunlight onto high-efficiency solar cells made of gallium arsenide or germanium.

Concentrator photovoltaics can brook sunlight onto the high-efficiency solar cells made of germanium semiconductors. Rachel Goldman, professor of materials science and engineering, and physics, whose lab developed the alloy said: “The new generation panels are on track to achieve efficiency rates of over 50%, while conventional silicon solar cells max out at around 25%.” Flat-panel silicon is maxed out in terms of efficiency. The cost of silicon isn’t going down and efficiency isn’t going up. Concentrator photovoltaics could power the next generation.”

Goldman and her team suggested a novel approach observing numerous variables in the process. Her team blended the on-the-ground measurement methods inclusive of X-ray diffraction and the ion beam analysis.

The magic alloy founded was a creation featured with arsenic, gallium arsenide, nitrogen, bismuth, and a material used in solar panels, silicon, which formed a layer of chemicals a few microns thick that could spray onto photovoltaic cells to harness infrared energy.

Another great innovation involved the simplification of making semiconductors or the chemical compounds having the ability to convert light into electricity in the solar panels. Silicon is used as a semiconductor in solar panels, and solar panel makers add ‘design impurities’ or ‘dopants’ to figure out how a semiconductor functions. The dopants used for gallium arsenide semiconductors involve silicon and beryllium. Goldman’s team found out how to purge the beryllium by reducing the levels of arsenic in the mix of dopants in gallium arsenide.

It has been a tough road to travel for the researchers, as the alloy must be cheap enough, stable, durable and capable of absorbing infrared light. Goldman’s team came up with a new approach for keeping track of the many variables in the process. They combined measurement methods including X-ray diffraction and ion beam analysis with custom-built computer modelling.

For More:

https://solar-energy-in-pakistan.blogspot.com/2019/03/scientists-reveal-solar-panel-that.html

https://www.reonenergy.com/how-large-should-a-solar-solution-be/

https://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.5046752

Future of Power Generation – Solar or Coal Fired Power plants

In physics, the law of conservation of energy states that energy can neither be created nor be destroyed. Rather, it only convert from one form to another. The USA, world’s largest economy, is the second biggest user of electricity in the world behind Canada. However, it is largely dependent for its electricity needs on fossil fuels. According to an estimate, nearly 33 percent of the power is produced by coal firing as per the government reports published in the year 2016.

A lot of emphasis is seen across the globe on the usage of large scale solar and especially on the usage of solar power for power generation instead of fossil fuels. A recent survey by agencies shows that the power generation from solar energy is very cost effective alternate option and can be adopted by most of the world very soon, say by the year 2040. This will not only assist our mother earth to reduce pollution but also the global warming effect the world is facing. Today, it is important to address air pollution and increase the competitiveness of renewables in countries that depend on coal.

The recent study conducted by the Bloomberg New Energy Finance shows, the coal-fired power plants electricity generation in the USA is likely to reduce to half of the present capacity by the year 2040, whereas in the Europe, it is projected to drop to 87 percent. This kind of drops in coal-fired power station and the then shift to solar power plants are driven due to the fall in the average price of electricity generation from solar energy, as the cost per kWh power produced from solar is expected to decline by almost 66 percent by 2020. Not only solar, but even the cost of power generation from wind energy is also expected to drop 47% due to technological advancements.

Despite numerous benefits, the renewable energy sources can never replace coal or other fossil fuels from power production because they are nature dependent and sometimes unreliable too. Especially when it comes to generating power during emergency needs and the base load factor comes in picture. Over past centuries, coal has helped power economic development and lifted billions of people out of poverty. Coal’s role has accelerated since 2000, with global consumption increasing by almost two-thirds, driven by its rising use in China and India. However, it is also true that the coal industry in this sector may come in doldrums soon!

Related Articles:

https://reonenergysolarpowersolution.quora.com/The-Myth-Solar-Power-Production-Rises-with-the-Temperature

https://solar-energy-in-pakistan.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-huge-promise-of-transparent-solar.html

https://www.scribd.com/document/405771791/The-Myth-Solar-Power-Production-Rises-With-the-Temperature

Water Cooling Solar Panels to Cut the Air Conditioning Costs

Most of us have heard of solar water heaters. Now, there’s a solar water cooler, and the technology may sharply lower the cost of industrial-scale air conditioning and refrigeration. The scientists at Stanford University, California have developed a cooling system which reduces the inside temperature of a building in a very hot (desert) climate condition by above 20% with the help of specially designed solar panels without the increase in the electricity consumption or water evaporation.

Although, we have been hearing about solar water heaters, this technology developed at Stanford University after implemented commercially will decrease the cost of industrial-scale air conditioning and refrigeration drastically.

The new water cooler solar panels are installed on the rooftop, are made up of three components.

1. The first component is a plastic layer with a silver coating reflecting nearly 100% incoming sunlight, thus keeps the panel away from heating up in the summer days, during the scorching heat.
2. Plastic layer is on the top of the second component- a coiled copper tube, through which water is circulated. In turn, it sheds heat to the plastic. Then this heat is radiated out by the plastic on top of the tube at a wavelength in the range of the infrared (IR) spectrum. This cannot be absorbed by the atmosphere and instead, goes all the way to outer space.
3. Finally, the whole panel is enclosed in a thermally insulating plastic housing, this guarantees that almost all the heat radiated away come from the circulating water and not from the surrounding air.

To conduct the actual field trial, scientists placed three such water cooling panels on the roof a building at their university campus. Each panel area was 0.37 square meters. Water was circulated through these at the rate of 0.2 liters every minute. The result received was, this setup cooled the water as much as 5°C below the ambient temperature. The test  ran for over 3 days.

Ronggui Yang - a mechanical engineer at the University of Colorado in Boulder, who earlier this year reported the development of a plastic film that cools everything it touches up to 10°C - “It’s an excellent paper. It shows a promising direction for real world use”. Because the plastic IR-emitting materials are commercially available in large quantities, it shows that the technology has the potential to be scaled up, Yang says.

Later, they modeled to show how their panels would help if integrated with a typical air conditioning plant for a two-story building in Las Vegas, Nevada. The results were positive and this setup lower the electrical demand required for air conditioning by almost 21%.

Related Articles:

https://www.reonenergy.com/our-projects/

https://solar-energy-in-pakistan.blogspot.com/2019/04/the-huge-promise-of-transparent-solar.html

https://www.scribd.com/document/404130389/Solar-Storage-Creating-Waves-as-Sunshine-Turns-to-Liquid-Gold

The Huge Promise of Transparent Solar Cells

Sunlight is everywhere, but so far our efforts to harvest its energy have been restricted to solar farms and rooftop panels. A new wave of analysis projects at different best solar companies applied to display screens, cars, and windows, which could supply around 40% of the energy demand in the United States.

In the last five to six years, transparent and semi-transparent light usage materials have started to emerge, according to Michigan State University researchers and authors of a review that was presented recently in Nature. The authors estimate there is somewhere in the region 5 to 7 billion square meters of glass surface in the US, and coating this with transparent solar cells with similar efficiencies to today’s solar panels could generate an additional 100GW of power, which approaches the nationwide potential of rooftop solar installations.

Richard Lunt, an associate professor at Michigan State University, and one of the authors of the research on transparent solar technology stated in a press release that they had been working for around five years on the highly transparent solar cells. He further added that the technology offered a positive route to economical, widespread solar adoption on surfaces both small and large. The review highlights three main tactics that support solar cells transparency and suggest an approach called solar concentrations.

There is also a related approach that coats glass in materials that redirect light from the surface of the glass to the edges, where it can be collected by conventional photovoltaic cells, called solar concentrators.

The authors point to the benefit of the ubiquitous technology whilst integrating standard silicon-based solar cells in transparent materials. They also point out that the efficiencies could be as high as 14% when thin films of opaque light-absorbing semiconductors cover the entire area. However, the authors advise about observing the effect of colored light on human’s circadian rhythm.

The authors chalk out number of challenges, including scaling, high demand for indium-based electrodes, glass surfaces being non-optimally positioned for sunlight collection, and the technologies depending on organic materials that had the possibility of limiting lifetimes.

Despite numerous challenges, there is still an enormous probability of turning every glass surface in the world into a solar panel. It would definitely be a bright future where all the gadgets could be self-charged using sunlight.

Related Topics:

https://solar-energy-in-pakistan.blogspot.com/2019/04/solar-storage-creating-waves-as.html

https://www.reonenergy.com/do-solar-panels-perform-well-in-winters/

https://solar-energy-in-pakistan.blogspot.com/2019/03/scientists-reveal-solar-panel-that.html

Solar Storage Creating Waves As Sunshine Turns To Liquid Gold

No matter how abundant or renewable, solar power has a thorn in its side. There is still no cheap and efficient long-term storage for the energy it generates.

A new wave is developed with minute metallic-gold particles used for conversion of sunlight to fuel. This technology is developed in South Australia, helps storing of solar energy as an option to battery storage.

The conversion of solar energy directly to chemical energy in the forms of methanol and methane, is the innovation of researchers from Flinders University and the University of Adelaide, in collaboration with quite a few other international institutions including Canterbury University, Victoria University, and the University of Utah.

The development process uses dynamic nano-clusters made up of a number of metallic-gold atoms. The atoms are said to interact with the molecules in UV light. The team built a device lab-scaled in Adelaide, South Australia and tested the effectiveness using artificial ultraviolet light.

The researchers say that with the scaling-up, there would be potential for commercial, industrial, and domestic applications. Meanwhile, some armies are also fascinated with using the process as a potential mobile generator that could assist the troops in the field to store energy.

Gunther Andersson, the lead researcher said that the world need storage that is more reliable. He stated that the special thing with their work was the use of specific nano-clusters that made the conversion more efficient. He added that using a gold-based catalyst gave 10 times more product than with the use of a contemporary catalyst.

According to an estimation, the technology has the potential for large-scale application, and the dynamic shape of nano-clusters produces more efficient chemical energy.

Although there are large-scale batteries, powerful ones, but the problem is the availability. The batteries are not developed for all these things yet. To get long-lasting batteries for a reasonable price is a major challenge at the moment, plus the chemicals used in the batteries are not very environmentally friendly.

Meanwhile, South Australia is considered as a world leader in green energy. Around a quarter of houses have installed rooftop solar panels in South Australia. Moreover, it is also the largest producer of wind energy in Australia – the state's 1.5GW of wind energy represents almost half of the country's capability.

Related Articles:

https://www.reonenergy.com/do-solar-panels-perform-well-in-winters/

https://www.reonenergy.com/our-projects/

https://solar-energy-in-pakistan.blogspot.com/2019/02/how-to-build-solar-power-plant.html