Photovoltaic-Thermal solar energy system design for dairy industry

Abstract

In 21th century demand for energy is rapidly increasing as the population is increased. To provide desirable living conditions and satisfy the food needs of overpopulated humanity getting harder and harder due to the limited energy and nutrient resources. Nutrient sources pass through many stages such as heating, cooling, drying and freezing which includes thermal and electrical energy needs before being presented to the consumer in the food industry. In the current situation, these two main energy requirements are largely met by fossil fuels which are not efficient, unsustainable and not user friendly in terms of resource management. In this context, the possibilities of usage Photovoltaic-Thermal (PV/T) solar energy systems which will be able to eliminate these disadvantages, use solar energy as a source and can meet the thermal and electrical requirements of the facility continuously has been investigated and, a system was designed which can meet the energy needs according to different scenarios for different processes. It is aimed to produce food in low carbon-emission facilities by meeting both electrical and thermal energy from the solar energy which is a renewable and clean energy source.

An investigation of the recent advances of the integration of solar thermal energy systems to the dairy processes

“…One of the renewables that have been widely used for generating domestic hot water and space heating is a solar energy. It has a great potential to be applied to the food industry as one of the top five energy demanding industrial sectors [2][3][4][5]. The dairy companies, in particular, require significant thermal energy for their heating and cooling processes like drying, evaporation, fermentation, pasteurization, washing and cleaning [6][7][8].…”

“…The electrical energy is mainly used for powering equipment like refrigerators, pumps, compressors, control units and lighting and processes like sterilization, centrifugal separation and homogenization [3,30]. Table 4 presents several studies with specific energy consumption: electrical (SEC electrical ) and thermal (SEC thermal ).…”

Performance assessment of photovoltaic/thermal (PVT) hybrid adsorption-vapor compression refrigeration system

“…1 demonstrates the main components of the solar-driven integrated adsorption-vapor compression refrigeration system, which is composed of a photovoltaic/thermal-based solar system, a two-bed adsorption-based cooling system and a baseline compression (electric) refrigeration system. Herein, photovoltaic/thermal collectors are used due to their inherent advantages of providing both heat and electricity [16,17]. Silica gel/water pair is deployed in the adsorption refrigeration system, while R134a is adopted for the compression unit.…”

Design of an innovative PV/T and heat pump system for greenhouse heating

“…The heat that can be obtained from HP can be expressed as follows [20]:…”