EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY ON SOLAR ENERGY STORAGE IN BLACK-COVERED SUNSPACE USING WATER-FILLED TIN CANS

Abstract

In this study, the aim was to store solar energy in a sunspace room for energy savings in cold regions by using water-filled tin cans. The energy collected in the water during the sunbathing hours is transferred to the environment in the evening when the ambient air temperature suddenly drops. Additionally, the walls were covered with black material in the sunspace area to absorb maximum solar energy and then the heating performance was evaluated. In addition to experimental studies, ANSYS Fluent software (2022 R1 version) as a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) program has been used to simulate the sunspace domain in analyses. According to the obtained results, while there was a sudden drop in temperature in the ambient air after sunset, it was observed that the water temperatures in the tin cans decreased more slowly. This indicates that heat transfer from the tin cans to the ambient air occurs during the night. In addition, the effect of black surface application was shown and the differences between indoor and outdoor temperatures were evaluated. While the average temperature difference between the indoor and outdoor environment during the sunshine period without the black surface was 4.67°C, this difference increased to 9.53°C when the black surface was applied. The highest energy efficiency was achieved with the usage of the black surface, reaching a notable 58.2%.