Evaluation of Design Performance for a Radiative Cooling Vessel Supplemented by Solar Power Generation
Restricted (Penn State Only)
Author:
Balaratna, Ian
Area of Honors:
Mechanical Engineering
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Linxiao Zhu, Thesis Supervisor Margaret Louise Byron, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Radiative Cooling Solar Power Heat Transfer Linxiao Zhu Ian Balaratna
Abstract:
With the societal shift towards promoting sustainability over the past few decades, one of the major changes that has come about through this movement is the development of renewable energy sources. With the aim to reduce the environmental impact of nonrenewable resources being used for power generation, the rise of natural gas, nuclear power, solar and winds farms, and other methods for cleaner power have risen in dominance and application during this time. Aside from power generation, climate control in buildings has been a major source of energy demand in the United States throughout this period, making this sector of energy use a prime position for integrating renewable energy equipment and practices.
With the aim of combining renewable power generation and cooling performance for climate control applications, the experimental testing carried out in this research sought to show the promising results of radiative cooling and solar power generation working in tandem. This cooling and power generating system worked with no external energy input and was able to generate good power output in peak sun hours, while all providing passive radiative cooling in that time.