Thermodynamic simulation of solar thermal system

Abstract

An article presents the thermodynamic simulation study of operating solar thermal collector system. The target of this study is to examine improvement possibilities of actual system by identifying avoidable exergy destruction. The simulation model was created in TRNSYS environment and is based on the real operating solar thermal collector system, installed in Building Energy and Microclimate Systems (BEMS) laboratory. Advanced thermodynamic analysis methods were used for the assessment of the system performance. Presented simulation based method helps to identify the avoidable and unavoidable exergy destruction parts of the component, operated on transient boundary conditions, in the system. The findings of this study reveal that the additional improvements of the system may create more irreversibility than the actual system in the analyzed case. Considering the non-linear behavior of the system, the complex assessment must be used to identify the rational parameters system components, in order to reach the lowest entropy production rate.