Cyprus University of Technology
- Offer Profile
- The Archimedes Solar Energy Laboratory (ASEL) is a research lab that deals with research in all areas related to the exploitation of solar energy.
Product Portfolio
Mission
- The aims of the laboratory are:
- To study solar thermal energy systems and applications including concentrating collectors, integrated collector storage and solar water heating, absorption
refrigeration and desalination of seawater.
- To use advanced modelling techniques of solar energy systems, including the use of transient simulations and artificial intelligence techniques.
- To study photovoltaic modules and systems and investigate ways to improve their performance, including building integration and hybrid photovoltaic/thermal systems.
- To study solar hydrogen generation and its use in standalone applications and the utilisation of hydrogen as a future energy carrier.
- To perform building load analysis and examine measures to lower the energy requirements of buildings, examine through simulation and measurements the energy performance of buildings and ways to integrate renewable energy systems on the buildings.
The expected results of our research are:
- to develop new types of solar collectors,
- to evaluate the effectiveness of solar cooling systems,
- to evaluate the performance characteristics of various types of PV technologies in the Cypriot environment,
- to develop innovative fault diagnostic and monitoring systems for solar thermal applications,
- to develop advanced modeling techniques of solar systems
- to improve the operation of existing solar systems,
- 改善能源沟纹e of buildings and lower their energy consumption,
- to develop an intelligent control for use in standalone solar hydrogen systems.
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Facilities
- The laboratory covers a space of approximately 200 square meters. It includes standard laboratory measuring facilities such as data acquisition systems, pyranometers, weather station, and sensors for temperature and flow measurements. The lab experimental equipment includes various types of flat collectors, storage tanks, a 14.4 square meters parabolic trough collector, various types of photovoltaic panels and hydrogen related equipment.
The laboratory includes also a Flir thermocamera with associated software for the analysis of thermal images, flux meters for the measurement of heat flux through a wall and thermal conductivity measurements. We are in the process of setting up an indoor solar testing facility the main part of which will be the solar simulator.
Computational simulation studies are performed using a number of available software which includes TRNSYS, F-Chart, EnergyPlus, Homer, RETScreen, Solar Advisor Model (SAM) and Flex-PDE for finite element analysis.
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Novel heat pipe solar collector
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PV panels of several types (poly-Si, single-Si, amorphous)
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Weather station
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Custom made water cylinder for testing of Phase Changing Materials for energy storage
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Standalone PV system based on batteries
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Thermocamera Flir
