SOLAR SPACE HEATING SYSTEM INTEGRATED WITH THERMAL ENERGY STORAGE

Abstract

Pakistan is a country with diverse environmental conditions and seasons. Based on its geography, Pakistan has a severe winter season that lasts for 3 to 4 months. The northern areas of Pakistan suffer from extreme weather conditions for even longer. Normally, during the winter season, population of Pakistan relies on gas and electric heaters to provide them with comfortable environment to live. But the natural gas supply is not consistent rather scarce and the electricity is quite expensive as Pakistan is facing electricity deficit. In northern and under-developed areas, people still do not have access to natural gas and electricity and they are compelled to use fossil fuels like wood for such domestic purposes. However, there is a huge potential of renewable energy available which is an attractive alternative in order to overcome this difficulty. Our project aims for the effective utilization of one of the inexhaustible energy sources available in nature, i.e. Sunlight, for domestic space heating purpose during winters. Our project addresses the issue of energy deficit mentioned above and provides a solution by utilizing solar energy to heat the space during day time. Although, there is sufficient solar radiation available at day time, peak demand for heating occurs during night hours. Therefore, proper storage mechanism is essential to extend the feasibility and utility. To make system sustainable and useful at night, when there is no sun, we have incorporated thermal energy storage system to compensate for the absence of sun and keep the system running for a specific period of time. This is achieved by incorporating a Phase Change Material which absorbs heat energy while being charged during the day and stores it in the form of latent heat and during night it discharges and thus converts back into the initial state while releasing the initially stored latent energy. The results achieved from experimentations depict that for each hour of heating requirement of the model space at night, approximately 1 kilogram of phase change material is required. The detailed calculations have been mentioned in the results later.