Solar thermal performance of two innovative configurations of air-vacuum layered triple glazed windows

Yueping Fang, Saim Memon, Jingqing Peng, Mark Tyrer, Tingzhen Ming

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

32 Citations (Scopus)
102 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

This study reports the optimal solar thermal performance of two innovative configurations of air-vacuum layered triple glazed window or Integrated Vacuum Window (IVW). These are when the vacuum layer of IVW is facing the warm or indoor side, i.e. IVWwarm, and when the vacuum layer of IVW is facing the cold or outdoor side, i.e. IVWcold, positions at dynamic solar insolation under winter and summer EN-ISO standard ambient conditions. A theoretically and experimentally validated finite element model is employed. The results show that in winter conditions, although the U-value of IVWwarm of 0.33 Wm-2K-1 is lower than that of IVWcold of 0.49 Wm-2K-1, the IVWcold has a higher solar heat gain. In sunny winter conditions, IVWcold provides higher energy efficiency while in winter night, IVWwarm provides higher energy efficiency than IVWcold. The results show that in summer conditions the U-value of IVWwarm and IVWcold are 0.34 Wm-2K-1 and 0.51 Wm-2K-1 respectively, while IVWwarm provides lower cooling-load and higher energy-efficiency compared to IVWcold. It is concluded that setting the vacuum gap at the indoor side position provides lower cooling-load and higher energy-efficiency compared to setting the vacuum cavity at the outdoor side position in summer ambient conditions.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)167-175
Number of pages9
JournalRenewable Energy
Volume150
Early online date27 Dec 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - May 2020

Bibliographical note

NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Renewable Energy. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Renewable Energy, 150, (2020) DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2019.12.115

© 2020, Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Funder

This work was supported by the Pump-Prime project (Ref: 13455-28) of Coventry University and InnovateUK project-ICURe grant (Ref: 13-14/518470120) 2018.

Keywords

  • vacuum
  • window
  • solar insolation
  • thermal performance
  • low emittance coatings

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Engineering(all)

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