Solar Energy 78 (2005) 495503 www.elsevier.

com/locate/solener

Heat gain reduction by means of thermoelectric roof solar collector

S. Maneewan a, J. Hirunlabh
a

a,*

, J. Khedari a, B. Zeghmati b, S. Teekasap

Building Scientic Research Center (BSRC), King Mongkuts University of Technology Thonburi, Pracha-Uthit Road, Bangmod, Thungkru, Bangkok 10140, Thailand b canique acoustique et instrumentation, Universite de Perpignan, France 52, Ave.de Paul Alduy, Laboratoire de me Perpignan, 66860 France Engineering Management Program, South-East Asia University, Petchkasem Road, Nongkham, Bangkok, 10160 Thailand Received 26 January 2004; received in revised form 21 July 2004; accepted 10 August 2004 Available online 17 September 2004 Communicated by: Associate Editor Joseph Khedari

Abstract This paper presents a numerical investigation on attic heat gain reduction by using thermoelectric modules integrated in a conventional roof solar collector (RSC). This system, called thermoelectric roof solar collector (TERSC), is composed of a transparent glass, air gap, a copper plate, thermoelectric modules (TE) and rectangular n heat sink. Due to the incident solar radiation, a temperature dierence is created between the hot and cold sides of TE modules that generates a direct current. This current is used to drive a ventilating fan for cooling the TE-RSC and enhancing attic ventilation that reduces ceiling heat gain. The system performance was simulated using TRNSYS program with new TE and DC fan components developed by our team and compared to a common house. Simulation results using real house conguration showed that a TE-RSC unit of 0.0525 m2 surface area can generate about 9 W under 972 W/m2 global solar radiation and 35 C ambient temperature. The induced air change varied between 20 and 40 and the corresponding ceiling heat transfer rate reduction is about 35 W/m2. The annual electrical energy saving was about 362 kWh. Finally, economical calculations indicated that the payback period of the TE-RSC is 4.36 years and the internal rate of return is 22.05%. 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Ceiling heat transfer rate; Economic; Roof solar collector; TRNSYS

1. Introduction Climate is an important factor that can aect not only the physical aspects of humans being but also their habits and living styles. Indoor conditions are greatly affected by the outdoor climate (De Waal, 1993). If a building is well adapted to the climate, it can protect its inhabitants against the extreme outdoors conditions,

Corresponding author. Tel.: +66 2 470 8621; fax: +66 2 428 4217. E-mail addresses: jongjit.hir@kmutt.ac.th, bsrc@kmutt.ac. th (J. Hirunlabh). URLs: http://www.bsrc.net, http://www.univ-perp.fr

0038-092X/$ - see front matter 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.solener.2004.08.003

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and create comfortable indoor conditions. Unfortunately, today designs are rather not appropriate and energy is widely used for creating comfort. Since two decades and due to increased awareness on environment, energy saving has become a major issue and various designs and options were proposed worldwide. The literature is rich and a complete review is out the scope of this paper. Reducing the amount of heat transferred into the house can be done in many ways, for example, using the materials that save energy (C okli and Yu ksel, 2002, Gratia and De Herde, 2002, Maneewan et al., 2003a), designing the house at the right location and locate the rooms in the right direction (Maneewan et al., 2003b), the use of solar chimney based ventilation (Aboulnaga, 1998), etc. Thailand is located in hot and humid zone and has average solar radiation of 17.5 MJ/m2.day (Namprakai et al., 1989). Protecting or reducing heat transfer through the roof, however, is extremely important as it represents alone about 60% of cooling load. This can be accomplished in various techniques such as the use of radiant barrier, insulation materials, ventilating attic, etc. Throughout the last decade the Building scientic research centers (BSRC) has developed various roof design congurations such as the roof solar collector (RSC), (Hirunlabh et al., 2001,Khedari et al., 2000) and the bio-climatic roof (BCR) (Waewsak et al., 2003). The RSC is composed of CPAC Monier concrete tiles, air gap and gypsum board whereas the BCR includes transparent tiles for daylighting. The incident solar energy induces natural ventilation that decrease heat gain through the roof and improve indoor ventilation. The use of photovoltaic (PV) panel can increase the induced ventilation rate of RSC considerably (Khedari et al., 2002). Recently, BSRC has proposed a new concept of roof design named thermoelectric roof solar collector (TE-RSC) for both reducing roof heat gain and enhancing attic and house ventilation (Maneewan et al., 2002). The innovative idea of the TE-RSC is the use of thermoelectric modules integrated in the former RSC structure for generating electricity from solar energy. This generated current is used to drive a ventilation fan for cooling the cold side of TE modules, and at the same time, it helps improving RSC and attic ventilation thus improving roof heat gain reduction. Lab-scale investigation of power generation performance of such unit was recently reported (Maneewan et al., 2003c,Maneewan et al., 2003d). This paper focuses on the ceiling heat reduction rate i.e., cooling load reduction that would result by the TERSC. In fact, prior to eld investigation of the TE-RSC using real house, energy saving assessment and economic feasibility analysis are necessary. To this end, TRNSYS program is used to simulate the system, and a simple economical analysis is conducted and discussed.

2. Description of the thermoelectric roof solar collector The thermoelectric TE roof solar collector (shown in Fig. 1) combines a conventional solar thermal collector with TE modules properly integrated into the roof solar collector developed earlier. The TE-RSC is composed of a transparent glass, air gap, a copper plate (absorber), TE modules where the hot side is attached directly to the absorber4, and a rectangular n heat sink directly attached to the cold side of modules as shown in Fig. 1 (Section A-A). The TE power generation unit is integrated in the conventional RSC, Fig. 1 (Section B-B). The space between the TE modules, absorber and heat sink was insulated using locally made bakelite. The size of the TE-RSC was 145 350 mm2. Such dimensions are smaller than conventional concrete roof tile available in the local market so that it could be easily integrated into the roof structure. Ten thermoelectric modules (cooling type TEC1-12708 Tianjin Lantian, China) were used. The ns were 3 mm thick, 145 mm long in the horizontal direction and have a height of 40 mm from the base. They are 8.4 mm spaced each other. For more details, see Maneewan et al., 2004.

3. System modelling The system is modeled with the well-known TRNSYS simulation program. The program consists of many sub-routines that model subsystem components. The ow diagram of TRNSYS deck le and type number of every TRNSYS subroutine used to model each component are shown in Fig. 2. The typical meteorological tear (TMY) le contains the hourly average data for a typical year calculated using ambient conditions during ten years (19902000) from the Department of Meteorology of Thailand which include the ambient temperature, total radiation and wind speed. Type 9c is a data reader used for receiving ambient temperature. Type 16a is a solar radiation processor. It is a component used to transform the radiation on at land into direct radiation and diuse radiation. The roof slope angle was 25. Type 73 is solar collector component we used to simulate the collector part of the TE-RSC. The temperature of the absorber was considered equal to that of the hot side of thermoelectric modules. Type 77 is a component we create for calculating current and voltage generated from TE-RSC. The output voltage Vo and current Io, are calculated as follows (Lau and Buist, 1997): Vo SN T h T c 1 2rlc =l 1

Io

SAT h T c 2qn l1 2rlc =l

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497

Fig. 1. Schematic of the thermoelectric roof solar collector (TE-RSC).

where S is the seebeck coecient of thermoelement material, N is the number of thermoelement in the module, l is the length of thermoelement, lc is thickness of the contact layer. Th and Tc are temperatures at hot and cold sides of module, A is cross-sectional area of the thermoelement, q is electrical resistivity, n = 2qc/ q, r = k/kc and qc is the electrical contact resistivity, k the thermal conductivity of the thermoelement and kc is the contact thermal conductivity; (Min et al., 1992). The properties S,q and k of most thermoelectric materials are temperature dependent. To determine them, the following equations provided by MELCOR (data extracted from the website in 2002) were used:
9 S 22224 936:6 T avg 0:9905 T 2 avg 10 9 q 5112 163:4 T avg 0:6279 T 2 avg 10

4 k 62605 277:7 T avg 0:143 T 2 avg 10

5 6

T avg T h T c =2

For commercially available modules, the values of n % 0.1 mm, r % 0.2 and lc % 0.7 mm reported by Rowe et al. (Rowe and Min, 1998) were used. The power output can be written as: Po a2 AN T h T c 2 2q n 11 2rlc =l2 7

3 4

Type 64 is a component we create to simulate the ventilation fan which is attached to the cool side of the thermoelectric modules. According to the TE-RSC design, the fan will be driven at various voltages depending on incident solar energy. To simulate its performance, we conducted preliminary testing by

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Fig. 2. Flow diagram of the TRNSYS deck le (top) and parameters for simulation (bottom).

varying the voltage between 0 and 14 VDC, which is the range of voltage where most DC commercial fan can work, at every 0.5 V interval and measured the air speed. In each rank of voltage we recorded the speed 60 times/min then we calculate average values. Next the set of data were correlated into a polynomial equation as a function of generated voltage Vo as follows W s 0:25538 0:49649 V o 0:14362 V 2 o
4 0:007164 V 3 o 0:000059 V o

4. House conguration For simulations, we used the house model 033A01 of the Land and Houses Public Company. It is a two-storey individual house with a living area of 155 m2 (Fig. 3). It has three bedrooms at the second oor and two bathrooms as well. The total ceiling surface area is 94 m2 and the house is located in Bangkok (1atitude 13.7N). It should be mentioned that in Thailand most houses are actually built without any attic insulation as there is no standard in the country.

The calculated air attic ventilation rate was then used to compute the ceiling heat reduction using the attic type 18 component of the TRNSYS program. Type 25a is component used in printing out the desired outputs which are generated power, ventilation and ceiling heat transfer rate.

5. Simulation results For simulations, we assume that the roof integrates only one unit of TE-RSC into the south-facing roof slopped at 25. The ceiling is made by 9 mm gypsum board.

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499

Fig. 3. The model of house for simulation (top) graphic representation; (bottom) top view of roof.

5.1. Thermoelectric module selection Simulation results indicated that the maximum temperature of the hot side of TE modules (assumed equal to that of the absorber) under Bangkok ambient conditions is about 100 C. Table 1 gives some characteristics of some commercially available thermoelectric modules. It can be seen that the thermoelectric module HT6-12-40 from Melcor (USA) or the TEC1-12708 module from Taihuaxing (China) have to be considered as they are appropriate to operate at low temperature (below 160 C). In this study, we select the module TEC1-12708for the simula-

tions as it is cheaper. The module specications for TEC1-12708 are given in Table 2. 5.2. Power output, system eciency and attic ventilation rate Fig. 4 illustrates the maximum variation of generated power by the TE-RSC and solar intensity. TE-RSC could generate a maximum power output of about 9 W around 1 to 2 p.m. under global solar radiation intensity (Bangkok) of about 972 W/m2 at ambient temperature about 35 C. The eciency of TE-RSC depended on the solar intensity and the maximum simulated eciency was about 6%.

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Table 1 Characteristics of some commonly available commercial Bi2Te3 module Parameter Leg length width (mm) Leg height (mm) Area of the thermoelement (mm2) Contact height (mm) Insulator plate thickness (mm) Module height (mm) Area to length ratio No. of couple (number) Maximum operating hot side temperature (C) Module costa (US$)
a

HT6-12-40 1.35 1.35 1.6 1.82 0.6 0.8 3.8 1.14 127 160170 22

TEC1-12708 1.4 1.4 1.2 1.0 0.63 3.46 1.63 127 160170 8.5

HZ-20 5.0 5.0 1.5 25 None None 5.0 5.55 71 230 154

BT-18/4 5.0 5.0 6.0 25 None None 8.5 4.17 83 270 150

During spring 2004.

Table 2 Parameters of thermoelectric module TEC1-12708 Cross section of thermoelement (mm ) Length of thermoelement (mm) Thickness of contact layer (mm) Number of TE series (module) Number of TE parallel (module) Ratio of contact electrical resistivity to bulk electricity resistivity Ratio of thermal conductivity to contact thermal conductivity Area to length ratio
2

50 45

1.8225 1.6 0.6 10 1 0.2 0.1 0.16

Air change rate (ACH)

40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00
Winter season Summer season

Time (h)

Fig. 5. Induced attic air change number during summer (22 April) and winter (22 December).
1200 1000
Solar intensity (W/m )
2

10
It Eff Power

8 800 7 6 600 400 200 0 7:00 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00 5 4 3 2 1 0

Power output (W) and efficiency (%)

5.3. Ceiling heat transfer rate and cooling load reduction Fig. 6 shows a comparison between the ceiling heat transfer rate of normal house design (no insulation) widely used in Thailand and the house with TE-RSC ventilation system on the hottest day of year (22 April). It could be observed that the maximum ceiling heat transfer rate of the normal house and the house with TE-RSC varied between 415 and 212 W/m2, respectively. It should be pointed out that such performance are close to those reported by Khedari et al. (2002) when PV attic ventilation was investigated that gives us condence to our simulation results. By considering the ceiling heat gain reduction, the corresponding percentage of average daily ceiling heat gain reduction for a TMY varied between 10 and 38%. It could be also observed that in the morning, the percentage of ceiling heat gain reduction is higher than in the afternoon. In fact, in addition to the ambient conditions, this is due to the thermal inertia of concrete roof tile that can store heat so that higher ceiling heat transfer rate is observed in the afternoon. The corresponding simulated hourly average cooling load reduction of the

Time (h)

Fig. 4. The maximum hourly solar intensity, power output and system eciency.

As the ventilating fan is derived directly by the thermoelectric modules, the air ow rate of TE-RSC varies following the solar intensity. Fig. 5 shows the corresponding induced number of attic air change (ACH) by TE-RSC which is quite high during the mid day (45 ACH) in summer. Obviously, the induced ACH is smaller during winter. Increasing the ACH could be achieved easily by increasing the number of units of TE-RSC.

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16 70 60 50 40 8 30 6 4 2 0 7:00 qnh qte CHGR 20 10 0 8:00 9:00 10:00 11:00 12:00 13:00 14:00 15:00 16:00 17:00 18:00

501

Ceiling heat transfer rate (W/m )

12 10

Ceiling heat gain reduction (%)

14

present value (NPV), pay back period (PBP) and internal rate of return (IRR) (Steiner, 1996),which can be calculated as follows PBP Ai As 1 in 1 Am i1 in 1 in 9

NPV Ao As

10

Time (h)

Fig. 6. Ceiling heat transfer rate of normal house (qnh) and the house with TE-RSC (qte) and percentage of ceiling heat gain reduction (CHGR).

house with TE-RSC for two typical days in summer and winter is about 375 and 180 W respectively.

where As is the annual income (energy saving), Ai is the initial cost, Am is the maintenance/ replacement cost, i is the discount rate and n is aging life. The internal rate of return can also be dened as discount rate that causes the net present value (Eq. (10)) of a cash ow equal to zero. The initial cost, aging life and replacement/maintenance costs of TE-RSC and two other commercial insulations are given in Table 3. For the analysis, we exclude labor cost and installation cost as they vary continuously. The energy saving and corresponding cost saving were calculated using the data given below: Operating time of the air conditioner: 7:00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. Energy Eciency Rate (EER) of Air conditioner labeled number 5 (Thai labeling) = 3.106 Wth/We. TE-RSC maintenance is conducted every ve years.

6. Economical analysis In this section, a simple economic analysis of TERSC compared to conventional insulations will be conducted using three common indicators. They are net

Table 3 Initial cost and maintenance/replacement cost of TE-RSC Contents Thermoelectric modules Heat sink (cold side) Copper sheet (hot side) Insulation Ventilation fan Accessories Total TE-RSC (1 unit) Micro ber; 2.77 US$/m2 (Thickness 50 mm, one side foil) Radian Barrier; 1.80 US$/m2
a

Initial cost (US$) 68 20 15 5 8 5 121 258 168

Aging life (Yr) over 20 Yr (1,00,000 h) 20 20 5 5 5 over 20 10 10

Maintenance costa/ Replacement cost (US$) 3 8 2 13 258 168

Thai labor rate, 1 USD equals about 40 baht.

Table 4 Comparison of the initial cost, average daily ceiling heat transfer and reduction rate and corresponding electrical energy saving Items Initial cost (US$) Ceiling heat transfer (W/m2) Ceiling heat transfer reduction range (W/m2) 610 36 24 Cooling load reduction (kW) Annual Energy saving

(kWh/Yr) No-Insulation Micro ber Radiant barrier TE-RSC

a

(US$/Yr)a 76.81 38.46 28.87

258 168 121

16 10 13 14

0.745 0.373 0.280

963.03 482.16 361.95

Electrical energy rate kWh = 2.978 Baht (+VAT 7%), 1 USD%40 Baht.

502 Table 5 Economical analysis calculation results Items PBP(Yr)

S. Maneewan et al. / Solar Energy 78 (2005) 495503

IRR (%) Aging life (Yr) 5 10 23.15 15 26.33 20 26.80

Interest rate (%)

NPV (US$) Aging life (Yr) 5 10 176.72 114.49 63.72 25.84 3.55 16.51 31.10 1.404 20.01 15 380.87 226.75 127.36 128.06 59.76 15.36 83.45 30.52 3.34 20 443.60 258.11 143.24 144.84 69.69 20.94 124.47 48.60 4.95

Micro ber

3.36

14.80

Radiant barrier

4.37

4.60

11.05

17.28

18.02

TE-RSC

4.36

3.00

18.23

21.15

22.05

5 10 15 5 10 15 5 10 15

74.55 33.17 0.52 1.45 22.21 39.08 37.72 45.49 53.55

The reference material costs are based on the Ministry of Commerce of Thailand as of November, 2003. The interest rate reference as the Krung Thai Bank Public Company Limited, eective date on November, 2003. Table 4 shows the calculation results of average daily ceiling heat transfer and reduction rate and the corresponding electrical energy saving of TE-RSC system, micro ber and radiant barrier insulations. It can be seen that the initial cost of TE-RSC is lower than commercial insulations by about 50 and 27%, respectively. However, ceiling heat transfer with commercial insulations are higher than the TE-RSC varying between 2 and 6 W/m2. Table 5 gives the calculated economic indicators for the three cases considered by considering dierent aging life and interest rate. Obviously micro ber insulation presents the best economic indicator due to its better heat insulation eciency. However the initial cost is much higher than the two other. It should be pointed out that if the labor and installation costs were included, the results would be certainly much dierent. Therefore it is reasonable to conclude that the TE-RSC system is an interesting option due two main reasons that are its relatively low initial cost and simplicity.

transfer, and create high ceiling air change rate depending on the intensity of solar energy. In respect to ceiling heat gain reduction, the decrease of the roof heat gain was about 2535% and the corresponding induced air change rate was about 2045 ACH. A simple economic analysis of a residential house built with commercial insulations (micro ber or radiant barrier) and TE-RSC indicated that the payback period was 4.36 and 4.37 compared to 3.36 years respectively. Finally we are aware that practical problems will be encountered and TE-RSC power generation might not be continuous, however, it is still reasonable to conclude that the TE-RSC seems to be an interesting alternative and eld investigation of this system merit to be considered.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the Thailand Research Fund (TRF) under the framework of Royal Golden Jubilee Program, the Commission on Higher Education of the Ministry of Education (MOE) and the Energy Policy and Planning Oce (EPPO) for providing nancial support to this research work, and to our research center.

7. Conclusion The objective of this paper was to conduct numerical investigation on heat gain reduction by means of Thermoelectric Roof Solar Collector (TE-RSC) toward its application in residential houses in Thailand. Simulations were executed by modeling the system with TRNSYS simulation program with two new components we developed for the thermoelectric modules and ventilation fan. Numerical simulation showed that TE-RSC could induce signicant attic ventilation rate, reduce ceiling heat

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