Solar photovoltaic powered phase change material thermal storage system for air conditioning system

Due to hot and harsh weather conditions of Saudi Arabia, 79% energy produce was consumed by buildings' sectors where almost 65% of the energy are used for heating, ventilating, and air- conditioning (HVAC) systems. Thus, need for alternative or additional cooling system that will reduce burden of energy intensive HVAC system will be identified and developed in this work by coupling phase change material (PCM) thermal energy storage (TES) and solar photovoltaic (PV) system with existing air conditioning units. This system will improve not only investment and operation cost but also reduce size and increase reliability of air conditioning system. Therefore, this study investigate performance of new or existing air conditioning system when coupled with additional PCM-TES system powered by PV system for real building application in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The utilization of PCM in TES system and powering it completely by PV system is novel due to its exceptional material and thermal features as compared with ice or chilled water that are dominatingly utilized in commercial TES frameworks for air cooling applications. The work will propose and investigate a hypothesis, which recommended that integration of PV and PCM-TES system with existing air conditioning system would significantly reduce energy consumption, greenhouse gases emission and size of the compressor along with economic benefit and less payback time. The proposed integration will also lower electricity distribution charges and maintenance charges. To test this hypothesis, firstly an analytical model will be developed and obtained result will be tested experimentally on the real scale prototype of solar photovoltaic powered PCM thermal storage air conditioning system (SPCMBOX). It is engineered to complement new or existing air conditioning (AC) equipment to shift energy use from the main HVAC system to the SPCMBOX system for cooling of buildings for more than 9 to 11 hours. The SPCMBOX turns off the energy-intensive AC compressor and uses the cool PCM stored during the off-peak hours to provide cooling instead. Further, this study will provide indebt knowledge of integration inefficiencies, complexity arises during real scale operations, energy losses, and actual capital cost involvement for deploying SPCMBOX under actual weather condition of Saudi Arabia