The electrohydraulic balance of the solar heat storage with autonomous power supply

The introduction of the paper emphasizes an increasingly important role of alternative power sources nowadays. At the same time, a solar collector (suntrap) is one of the most frequent techniques to use the solar energy. It is an absorber that picks up solar radiation and heats a heat carrier circulating in the close loop. Then the heat is transferred to the heat accumulator that is integrated in the hot-tap water system (HWS).The paper presents a prospective circuit of the solar collector. It differs from the traditional one because, in addition to absorbing panel, it uses photoconverters to generate electric power for the circulating pump. The advantage of this system is that for operation such a solar energy converter has no need in external power sources, i.e. it is autonomous. The need to calculate the essential thermo-physical parameters that ensure no-break system operation was stated as a main objective of the work.The suggested circuit has a photocell panel to convert solar radiation into dc voltage of 12 V. In case of a lack of the solar energy an accumulator battery can be used for feeding. To ensure the no-break supply of power an adaptor is offered.To calculate a density distribution of solar radiation a sine law is offered depending on the time of day and geographical locality. This dependence was used to obtain the expressions for calculating the water temperature in boiler over daytime.Further, the calculations have been done for the operating conditions under which an efficient heat exchange will be provided with the minimum consumption of electric power for the heat carrier circulation in the first loop. For this purpose, a pump power was calculated depending on consumption and hydraulic losses of head in the pipeline. As a minimum required consumption the value has been chosen at which a laminar flow regime changes to the turbulent one because of the most efficient heat exchange being both in collector and in heat accumulator. The hydraulic loss has been calculated by Darcy-Weisbach equation. Finally, the formula has been obtained to calculate a minimum area of photo converters to be needed for the solar power system to ensure no-break operation. As a result of studies, it has been found that with typical external parameters, the area required for photo converters is about 100- 300 cm2 . Dependences to calculate main parameters of system components including necessary minimum areas of absorber and photo converter, pump power, heat carrier consumption has been obtained as well.The paper conclusions are as follows. The model of solar heat accumulator obtained in the paper makes it possible to calculate main parameters of system components. Required photo converter dimensions have acceptable values. Also it is necessary to calculate the convection exchange processes in absorber to optimize a design for reducing the thermal and hydraulic losses.Further, the paper presents the calculation of operating conditions under which an efficient heat exchange is ensured with minimum consumption of electric power for the heat carrier circulation in the first loop. For this, a pump power has been calculated depending on the consumption and hydraulic losses in the pipeline.</p

Vacuum arc on the polycrystalline silica cathode

Thin films of silica and its compounds are used in modern technology to produce Li-ion batteries, wear-resistant and protective coatings, thin-films insulators, etc. This coating is produced with CVD methods, with magnetron sputtering systems or with electron-beam evaporation. The vacuum arc evaporation method, presently, is not used.The paper demonstrates a possibility for a long-term operation of vacuum arc evaporator with polycrystalline silica-aluminum alloy (90% of silica) cathode and with magnetic system to create a variable form of arch-like magnetic field on the cathode surface. It was shown that archlike configuration of magnetic field provides a stable discharge and uniform cathode spots moving with the velocities up to 5 m/s with magnetic fields induction about 10 mT. Thus, there is no local melting of the cathode, and this provides its long-term work without chips, cracks and destruction. Cathodes spots move over the cathode surface leaving t big craters with melted edges on its surface. The craters size was 150-450μm. The cathode spot movement character and the craters on the cathode surface were like the spots movement, when working on the copper or aluminum cathodes. With the magnetic field induction less than 1 mT, the cathode spots movement was the same as that of on the silica mono-crystal without magnetic field. Thus, the discharge volt-ampere characteristics for different values of magnetic fields were obtained. Voltampere characteristics were increasing and were shifted to the higher voltage with increasing magnetic field. The voltage was 18.7-26.5 V for the arc current 30-140 A.So, it was confirmed that vacuum arc evaporation method could be used for effective evaporation of silica and silica-based alloys and for thin films deposition of this materials.</p