Materials for Solar Energy Conversion

We thank all the authors for their valuable research input and contribution. We render our sincere thanks to Scrivener–Wiley publishing team for their help with this book. We would like to thank Dr. P. Sathish Kumar for his help in proofreading the initial drafts of the chapters of the book.

R. Rajasekar C. Moganapriya A. MohankumarSeptember 2021

Manivannan Rajendran1*, Moganapriya Chinnasamy1, Suresh Muthusamy2 and Manikandan Kumaran Nair1

1Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kongu Engineering College, Erode, Tamil Nadu, India

2Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, Kongu Engineering College, Erode, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract

Due to inadequate fossil fuels in a world, there is high increasing demand for utilization of human beings and the sustainable renewable energy resources play an important role in developing and non-developing countries. However, among the numerous energy resources, solar energy is promising because of environmental eco-friendly and unlimited supply. There is immense experiment in the proper usage of solar energy as a fresh, non-polluted environment factors. The solar radiation energy mainly helps to convert in the form of electric energy and thermal energy. It is an alternative method to produce electricity in a wider range of industrial purposes as well as in some other fields such as building applications, food storage products, agricultural purposes to operate pumps, engines, motors, and various industrial appliances such as fans and refrigerators. This present study focused on the various forms of solar energy utilization and in depth of thermal applications, solar drying, and photovoltaic thermal systems related to domestic and such industrial usage.

Keywords: Collectors, heating systems, solar drying, photovoltaic, PV/T systems

Energy usage plays a vital role in last few decades due to rapid changes in environmental conditions precisely global warming effects which lead to energy demand. Energy acts as an important role in identifying the economic development of developing nations. Eliminating those problems constantly imposes us toward alternative energy sources [1]. The World Health Organization published the statistics; there are major remarkable climatic changes in between 2030 and 2050 which cause deaths approximately 250,000 per year. Presently, 80% of conventional energy sources are reported as global energy consumption [2]. The renewable energy utilization estimated in the year 2020 is approximately 8.65%. In the year 2050, this source of energy may tend to increase around 9.82% in the energy demand. The global industrial energy consumption by fuel is shown in Table 1.1.

Renewable energy sources are free from carbon-di-oxide emission such as solar energy, tidal energy, biomass energy, and wind energy [3]. There is a higher growth in fuel prices and climatic constraints, and industrial sectors are inclined to the renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuel usages. Hence, new advanced technologies are introduced to replace conventional energy sources in industries and some other appliances also [4]. Among the various different types of renewable energy, solar energy is free, clean, and non-pollutant environmental source that has to be implemented in industries. Generally, there is a large quantity of solar energy is available in our earth, easy to extract from sun’s radiation and significantly reduction takes place in green house effects. However, more number of attempts has been made to produce solar energy through photoelectric conversion, photo thermal conversion, photoelectric-photothermal conversion, photochemical conversion, sun trackers and giant mirrors, etc.

According to International Renewable Energy Policy, the renewable energy generation capacity is accounted in total as 2,537 GW in global energy consumption by the end of 2019 [5]. The net increase of global renewable energy generation capacity is 176 GW (7.4%) in 2019. In this total renewable energy sources, solar energy continued to be a prominent energy generation that takes place as 23% approximately and 20% rise in the year 2019 compared with previous assessment year of 2018.

Table 1.1 Global industrial energy consumption pattern by fuel in 2020 and 2050 (in terms of %).

Various forms of energy [6]: Energy occurs in different forms of energy [39]. They are mechanical energy, chemical energy, electrical energy, thermal energy, nuclear energy, and radiant energy.

The various sources and output are summarized in Table 1.2[1].

Generation of renewable energy sources—region-wise data source from renewable energy statistics 2020, comparatively renewable energy generation capacity in 2018 to 2019—is presented in Table 1.3.

There is a continuous development in an alternative energy to fossil fuels and some other energy sources in which renewable source is one of most emerging thing but it is not a new one to the world. In general, across the worldwide nations, there is larger availability of renewable energy which would meet the world’s energy demands as per requirements. However, only 0.02% of solar energy sources can be utilized of total sources like as wind energy, solar energy, bio-mass, and geothermal energy sources [7, 8]. In the past years, there is a rapid increase of solar and wind power systems, which gives a better performance characteristics and more growth rate also. The production and principal costs have been reduced suggestively of those systems. Due to these improvements in the commercial markets, renewable energy has more openings. Solar energy is more extensive technologies based on their effective outcome to the markets in various locations. According to the International Energy Outlook (IEO), total world marketed energy consumption is estimated to rise-up from the year 2020 to 2030 around 12% [7].

Table 1.2 Various sources of energy.

Table 1.3 Renewable energy sources, annual production, and global demand [40].