Abstract

ALBIZZATI, Enrique. Sustainability assessment of solar installations with flat plate and evacuated tube collectors. Rev. Int. Contam. Ambient [online]. 2016, vol.32, n.3, pp.315-322. ISSN 0188-4999.  https://doi.org/10.20937/RICA.2016.32.03.06.

The generation and use of energy resources produce environmental effects, so that in the assessment of the application of solar energy is necessary to consider the complete cycle of the exploitation through the life cycle analysis. In this work sustainability indicators for solar installations of water heating, to use electricity (SE) and liquified gas (SLG) as auxiliary energy are calculated. Devices with flat plate collectors (FP) have lower values of solar contribution to the demand and thermal efficiency (84.3% and 34.0%) however, with evacuated tubes (ET) are 89.3% and 46.3%, respectively. The solar thermal energy generated and the emissions avoided are determined by discounting on gross values of energy consumption and emissions due to the specific requirements for the collection of solar radiation. The maximum total thermal energy generated is 189 161.6 MJ (SLG-FP), and the maximum total mitigation is 21 375.2 kg CO2 eq (SE-FP). The energy generated from the collector per year and per square meter is higher with liquefied gas and evacuated collector (SLG-ET). However this type of collector maximizes the mitigations per year and per square meter using electricity (SE-ET). The energy payback periods for these technologies are among 8.1 (SLG-ET) and 12.3 (SE-FP) months, but the environmental paybacks are among 5.5 (SE-ET) and 12.1 (SLG-FP) months.

Keywords : solar; heating; water; energy; emissions.

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