The renewable energy sources are often presented as ‘clean’ sources, not considering the environmental impacts related to their manufacture. The production of the renewable plants, like every production process, entails a consumption of energy and raw materials as well as the release of...

The life-cycle analysis (LCA) of photovoltaic (PV) systems is an important tool to quantify the potential environmental advantage of using solar technologies versus more traditional technologies, especially the ones relying on non-renewable fossil fuel sources.

Increasing concern for sustainability compels citizens and enterprises to reduce waste and encourage recycling, reuse and remanufacturing of end-of-life products. Since packaging is one of the most relevant waste sources, attention to packaging design and management is warranted, especially in...

Today, the concept of net zero-energy buildings has become a major concern regarding fossil fuels combustion side effects, such as air pollution or global warming. Nonetheless, NG (natural gas) is a kind of fossil fuels which is widely combusted in Iran to meet various buildings heating demand....

An experimental platform for testing solar collectors has been designed and built at Southeast University, China. In this article, the structure and the detailed operation of this platform are presented. The performance of an evacuated heat pipe solar collector, in which a heat-pipe is used to...

A simple, transient model for the characterization of the dynamic thermal performance of solar thermal collectors was developed and experimentally validated. The proposed model equation is linear with respect to the input parameters and does not require any treatment for ordinary differential...

Integrated photovoltaic–thermal solar collectors have become of great interest in the solar thermal and photovoltaic (PV) research communities. Solar thermal systems and solar PV systems have each advanced markedly, and combining the two technologies provides the opportunity for increased...

The impact of the optical properties on the annual performance of flat plate collectors in a Swedish climate has been estimated with the MINSUN program. The collector parameters were determined with a theoretically based calculation program verified from laboratory measurements. The importance...