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Review on applications of particle swarm optimization in solar energy

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DOI: 10.1007/s13762-018-1970-x

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International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology
https://doi.org/10.1007/s13762-018-1970-x

REVIEW

Review on applications of particle swarm optimization in solar energy

systems
A. H. Elsheikh1 · M. Abd Elaziz2,3

Received: 5 June 2018 / Revised: 3 August 2018 / Accepted: 12 August 2018

© Islamic Azad University (IAU) 2018

Abstract
Solar energy is one of the most important factors used in the development of the countries. Since it is a renewable energy
source, it reduces the demand on the non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels, oil, natural gas, nuclear, and other
sources. Therefore, many researchers have sought to improve the performance of solar energy systems via applying several
metaheuristic methods such as particle swarm optimization (PSO) which simulates the behavior of the fish schools or bird
flocks. PSO has been used in different applications including engineering, manufacturing, and medicine. The main process
of the PSO is to determine the optimal position for each particle inside the population. This is performed through updating
the position using the velocity of each particle and the shared information between the particles. The aim of this paper is to
provide a review on the PSO’s applications to improve the performance of solar energy systems and to identify the research
gap for future work. The literature review used in this study indicates that the PSO is a very promising method to enhance
the performance of solar energy systems.

Keywords  Solar energy · Metaheuristic methods · Particle swarm optimization · Solar collectors · Solar cells ·
Photovoltaic/thermal systems · Solar stills

Introduction The renewable energy resources, as biomass (Barnes 2015),

Energy and water are the most important elements required
to ensure the survival of human beings. The demand for
energy and water is growing worldwide due to the rapid
population growth and industrial revolution. In the last two
centuries, fossil fuels have been the main energy source.
However, the conventional fossil fuels are expendable
resources which have serious environmental problems such
as air pollution and global warming. Therefore, the need to
clean inexhaustible renewable energy resources has arisen
to overcome the energy shortages (Awan and Khan 2014).
Editorial responsibility: Parveen Fatemeh Rupani.
* M. Abd Elaziz
abd_el_aziz_m@yahoo.com
1
Department of Production Engineering and Mechanical
Design, Tanta University, Tanta 31527, Egypt
2
School of Computer Science and Technology, Wuhan
University of Technology, Wuhan, China
3
Department of Mathematics, Faculty of Science, Zagazig
University, Zagazig, Egypt
wind (Alhmoud and Wang 2018), geothermal (Lu 2018), and
solar energy (Kannan and Vakeesan 2016) have attracted
considerable attention in many industrial and engineering
applications such as electricity generation (Jain et al. 2018),
water desalination (Sharshir et al. 2016), and domestic space
heating (Sharma et al. 2017). Among all renewable energy
resources, solar energy has the widest range of applications.
There are many solar energy-based systems which can
be utilized in heat generation, water desalination, and elec-
tricity production such as solar collectors, solar air heaters,
solar water heaters, solar cookers, solar dryers, solar stills,
solar-assisted heat pumps, and photovoltaic–thermal (PV/T)
systems. Improving the thermal performance of these sys-
tems is a crucial issue. There are numerous experimental
studies carried out to assess and augment the performance
of these systems (Verma et al. 2017; Sathyamurthy et al.
2015; Biglarian et al. 2018). However, the experimental
studies are too time consuming and costly. Moreover, clas-
sical statistical-based design of experiments methods may
not be able to do that job. Many optimization methods have
been used to achieve this target such as genetic algorithm
(GA) (Durão et al. 2014), harmony search (HS) (Banerjee

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 International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology

et al. 2014), whale optimization (WO) (Oliva et al. 2017),
simulated annealing (SA) (Mousavi et al. 2017), artificial
bee colony optimization (ABCO) (Mohamed et al. 2014),
ant lion optimization (ALO) (Hadidian-Moghaddam et al.
2017), and particle swarm optimization (PSO) (Kuok et al.
2010; Rezaee Jordehi 2018; Rey and Zmeureanu 2018).
PSO as an evolutionary computation technique has been
used for different optimization problems such as continu-
ous non-linear, constrained and unconstrained, and non-
differentiable multimodal functions (Marini and Walczak
2015). PSO, compared to other optimization techniques such
as GA, has less number of adjusting parameters, and hence,
it has higher computational efficiency. Therefore, PSO has
attracted the attention of many researchers in different engi-
neering applications. There are many published review arti-
cles focus on the application of PSO on different engineer-
ing applications such as solar photovoltaic systems (Khare
and Rangnekar 2013), economic dispatch (Mahor et  al.
2009), acoustic signal (Al-geelani et al. 2015), geotechnical
engineering (Hajihassani et al. 2018), light scattering (Xu
2015), and clustering high-dimensional data (Esmin et al.
2015). Moreover, there are many published articles on the
applications of PSO in solar energy systems; the inputs and
the optimization outputs for each system are summarized
in Table 1. However, to the best knowledge of the authors,
there are no previous reviews on the applications of PSO in
solar energy systems.
The remainder of this review offers the following:
• A brief explanation about the inspiration and the math-
ematical model of the PSO algorithm is introduced.
• The applications of PSO in different solar systems such
as solar collectors, solar cells, solar power tower, photo-
voltaic/thermal systems, and solar stills are summarized
in detail.
• Conclusions and scope for further research are also pre-
sented.

Table 1  Inputs and outputs of PSO models for different solar energy systems
Solar device Input parameters Optimized output

Parabolic trough solar collector (Cheng et al. Focal length Maximize the optical efficiency
2015) Aperture width
Flat-plate solar air heater (Siddhartha et al. Ambient temperature Maximize the thermal efficiency
2012) Wind velocity
Plate emissivity
Tilt angle
Building heating system (Bornatico et al. 2012) Solar collector area Minimize the energy consumption
Auxiliary power unit size Minimize cost of installations
Tank volume Maximize the solar fraction
Solar cell (Ye et al. 2009; Hamid et al. 2013; I-V data Optimize solar cell parameters such as:
Mughal et al. 2017) series resistances, shunt resistances, photogen-
erated currents, diode saturation currents
and Ideality factors
Photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) systems (Tabet Geographical terrain inputs (altitude, longi- Optimize tilt angle setting
et al. 2014; Shi et al. 2015) tude, and attitude) Maximize output power
I-V data
Solar power tower (Li et al. 2017, 2018) Field layout Maximum potential daily energy collection
Cosine factor
Intercept factor
Atmospheric attenuation factor
Shadowing and blocking factor
Solar thermal power plant (Farges et al. 2018) Receiver width Maximize the yearly collected thermal energy
Receiver height Maximize yearly optical efficiency
Receiver tilt angle
Tower height
Multi-tower heliostat (Piroozmand and Design and layout of a multiple solar power Maximize the optical efficiency
Boroushaki 2016) tower system
Solar still (Al-Sulttani et al. 2017a) Unknown constant (C) and the exponent (n) Solar still productivity
for the Nusselt number expression used to
formulate the equation for the estimation of
the hourly yield

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International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology
Particle swarm optimization
Inspiration
The Particle swarm optimization (PSO) is one of the most
popular metaheuristic methods proposed by (Kennedy and
Eberhart 1995). The PSO emulates the social behavior of
birds to search the food sources in which these birds share
the information between them (the position of each one
and the nearest particle to the source of food). In the PSO
method, the position xi of each particle represents the solu-
tion of the given problem and the best solution represents the
source of solution. In the PSO method, each particle has its
own memory to save the previous best position reached by
the particle and the global best position of the entire popula-
tion (that belongs to it). According to the information saved
in the memory of each individual (particle) and its velocity
vi, it can update its position xi (t + 1) as in Fig. 1.
Mathematical model
In general, the PSO method represents the population by X,
where this population is generated using a random number
generator according to the following equation:
X = L + rand × (U − L) (1)
where L and U represent the lower and upper boundaries,
respectively, of the search domain of the given problem.
Each individual/particle xi of X can update its velocity (vi)
using the following equation:
p g
vi (t + 1) = wvi (t) + c1 r1 (xi (t) − xi (t)) + c2 r2 (xi (t) − xi (t))
(2)
Fig. 1  a The movement of particle in the environment; b Velocity and position updates of particles in the PSO algorithm
where c1, r1, c2, and r2 represent random numbers, in which
w is an inertia weight used to improve the speed of conver-
gence; meanwhile, c1 and c2 represent the coefficients of
acceleration, and t represents the current time (iteration).
Thereafter, the position of particle xi is updated as
xi = xi + vi (3)
The next step in the PSO model is to evaluate the quality of
each particle through computing the fitness function. Then
the global best solution (xi ) is determined, also, the best
g
position that the current particle (xi ) reached is determined
p
(also, called best personal position). These previous steps
are performed until the stopping conditions are met. The
final steps of the PSO algorithm are given in Algorithm 1.
Algorithm 1: The particle swarm optimization algorithm
1- Initialize the parameters such as number of particles N, dimension
d, and lower (L) and upper (U) boundaries of the search space.
2- Generate random solutions (X).
3- Generate a random velocity for each solution (vi).
4- While (termination criterion doesn’t meet)
5-    For each particle in X
6-      Compute the objective function value.
7-      Update the best personal position (xi ).
p
8-      Update the global best position (x ).
g
9-      Update a new velocity using Eq. (2).
10-    Update the position of current particle using Eq. (3).
11-   End For
12- Return the global best solution (xg ).
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 International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology

Applications of PSO in solar energy

This section provides a comprehensive review of the

published articles on PSO’s applications in solar energy
devices, such as solar collectors, solar cells, solar power
tower, photovoltaic/thermal systems, and solar stills.

Solar collectors

Solar collectors are mainly used to receive and collect the

sun radiation and transform the collected radiation into
thermal energy, which is transferred to a working fluid
(Colangelo et al. 2016). Therefore, they have an impor-
tant role in different solar energy systems. There are many
types of solar collectors such as flat-plate collectors, evac-
uated tube solar collectors, and parabolic trough solar
collectors (Salgado Conrado et al. 2017). It is desired to
minimize the construction cost and maximize the thermal
efficiency of solar collectors via reducing their size while
collecting the same heat energy (Buttinger et al. 2010).
Cheng et al. (2015) investigated the performance of
parabolic trough solar thermal power system as one of
the most efficient commonly used solar energy systems.
However, it still suffers from high construction and operat-
ing cost compared with traditional fossil fuel power plants
(Cheng et al. 2014). The parabolic trough solar collector is
the most important subsystem of the solar thermal power
system as shown in Fig. 2a; therefore, there is a need to
develop an efficient optimization method to select the
optimal value of each parameter of such collector. Optical
efficiency, defined by the ratio between the absorbed solar
radiation and the incident solar radiation on the collec-
tor opening, was considered as the main objective func-
tion to be optimized using PSO algorithm and the Monte Fig. 2  a Schematic of a cross-section view of a parabolic trough solar
collector; b flowchart of the hybrid PSO/MCRT algorithm (repro-
Carlo ray tracing (MCRT) method. Among all design duced with permission from Cheng et al. 2015)
parameters shown in Fig. 2a, the focal length, the aper-
ture width, the rim angle, the outer glass cover diameter,
the outer absorber diameter, the tracking error, and the flat-plate solar air heater by optimizing its operating
surface imperfection error, only the focal length and the parameters such as ambient temperature, wind velocity,
aperture width were used as decision variables. To assure plate emissivity, and tilt angle. The obtained results indi-
the accuracy and robustness of the PSO/MCRT approach cate that the turbulence effect as well as the mass flow rate
(Cheng et al. 2014), the standard deviation and the mean is enhanced by increasing Reynolds number, and hence,
absolute percentage error between predicted and actual heat transfer rate increases which results in enhancing
experimental data were calculated in the error analysis the thermal performance. Moreover, the thermal perfor-
of the PSO model. The standard deviations for the pre- mance was enhanced by increasing the number of glass
dicted optical efficiency, aperture width, and focal length cover plates or decreasing the top loss coefficient. The
were 0.03, 3.48, and 0.98, respectively. The mean absolute thermal efficiency has been maximized using the proposed
percentage error of the predicted optical efficiency was algorithm and has reached about 72% when three glass
0.0312%. covers were used at solar radiation intensity of 600 W/
Siddhartha et al. (2012) developed a PSO algorithm m2, wind speed of 1 m/s, tilt angle of 68.36°, plate emis-
to estimate optimal thermal performance of a smooth sivity of 0.89, and ambient temperature of 7.28 °C. To
verify the accuracy and robustness of this proposed PSO

13
International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology
approach (Siddhartha et al. 2012), its results were com-
pared with actual experimental data. The obtained results
had a mean bias error and a root mean squared error of
0.22 and 0.47, respectively. The obtained results showed
a good agreement with experimental results which testi-
fies the algorithm’s robustness. In Bornatico et al. (2012),
a PSO algorithm proposed to determine the optimal size
of solar thermal system components such as the solar col-
lector area, the auxiliary power unit size, and the tank
volume. A wide search range for each model parameter
has been used, namely solar collector area (1–40 m2), the
auxiliary power unit size (5–50 kW), and the tank volume
(100–300 l). According to the parameter sensitivity analy-
sis results, the collector size is the main parameter that
affects the installation cost, the energy use, and the solar
fraction, while the effect of auxiliary power unit size on
the installation cost and the energy use is negligible. The
proposed algorithm showed better performance compared
with those obtained using GA.
Solar cells
Solar cell is an electrical device used to convert solar
energy (sunlight) directly into electricity (Assadi et al.
2018). However, it suffers from its low efficiency and
high cost. Many studies have been carried out to enhance
Fig. 3  a Single and b double models of a solar cell; and the evolving processes of PSO and genetic algorism for both c the single and d the dou-
ble solar cell models (reproduced with permission from Ye et al. 2009)
the conversion efficiency of different types of solar cells.
PSO as a powerful optimization tool has been proposed to
achieve this purpose.
Ye et al. (2009) illuminated current–voltage characteris-
tics of a solar cell used to extract the solar cell parameters
using PSO for the single- and double-diode models shown
in Fig. 3a, b (Humada et al. 2016). The first model is based
on a modified Shockley diode equation by using the quality
factor of a diode to describe the recombination effect. It is
suitable for modeling and describing the behavior of solar
cells under normal operating conditions. However, at low
illuminations, this model shows low accuracy. The second
model is a good tool to describe the physical phenomena
that occur in the solar cell and gives a good insight into
its relationship with the solar cell parameters by using
exponential voltage dependence to describe a separate cur-
rent component. In general, the single-diode model has
low accuracy in representing the behavior of solar cells
compared with double-diode model (Wolf et al. 1977). The
experimental illuminated I-V data and the unknown model
parameters adjusted by PSO algorithm are used as decision
variables to minimize an objective function. In PSO, the
best fitness of an individual is obtained by minimizing the
objective function as possible. The following procedures
are applied in the proposed algorithm:
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 International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology

(i) Swarm particles positions and velocities as well as

the inertia weights are randomly initialized according
to prescribed conditions.
(ii) The PSO inputs are determined from the solar cell
current–voltage characteristics.
(iii) The fitness of each particle is evaluated
(iv) The best of each particle is compared with its current
fitness
(v) The position of the particle that has the best fitness
defines the global best
(vi) The velocity vector for each particle is updated
(vii) The position for each particle as well as the inertia
weights is updated
(viii) The algorithm is repeated (beginning from iii) until
the stop criteria is fulfilled

Moreover, the PSO performance was compared with the

performance of GA for both investigated models. However,
the PSO has low convergence speed compared to GA, and
the former shows a better performance as it has much lower
fitness value compared to the latter as shown in Fig. 3c, d.
This is because of the ability of PSO to converge the global
optimal solution for non-linear problems characterized by
the existence of many local minima. In Hamid et al. (2013),
the parameters of a solar cell are extracted considering
single-diode model using time-varying acceleration coeffi-
cient and inertia weight-based PSO algorithm. Five different
parameters of the solar cell current–voltage characteristics
have been estimated using the proposed algorithm, namely
generated photocurrent, shunt resistance, series resistance,
saturation current, and ideality factor. A commercial silicon
solar cell was tested, and the obtained experimental results
were used to verify the accuracy of the estimated parameters.
The procedures used in the parameter identification using the
PSO method are illustrated in the flowchart shown in Fig. 4. Fig. 4  Flowchart of the proposed PSO algorithm (reproduced with
The obtained results of the proposed algorithm were com- permission from Hamid et al. 2013)
pared with those obtained from other optimization methods,
namely simulated annealing algorithm, chaos particle swarm (more than ± 100%) for each model parameter has been used.
optimization algorithm, and artificial bee swarm optimiza- Moreover, to figure out the effect of polymer-processing
tion algorithm. Among all tested algorithms, the modified temperature on the ZnO/PCDTBT co-polymer-based solar
PSO algorithm showed the best performance in terms of cell, the optical absorption, charge transport properties,
standard statistical performance evaluation criteria. The root chemical compositional behavior, and surface morphol-
mean squared error for the three optimization algorithms ogy of PCDTBT co-polymer films have been investigated
under investigation, namely simulated annealing algorithm, and correlated with the extracted parameters of the global
chaos particle swarm optimization algorithm, and artificial PSO approach. The results showed that high-temperature
bee swarm optimization algorithm was 0.0017, 0.00139, and annealing of the polymer results in enhancing ordering in
9.9124 × 10−4, respectively, while it was 9.86024 × 10−4 for the system via deliberate motion of the polymer chains.
the proposed approach. Consequently, the charge transport property of the polymer
Kumar et al. (2017b) proposed a global PSO algorithm increases.
to determine hybrid solar cells parameters, namely open In Mughal et  al. (2017), parameters of a silicone
circuit voltage, short circuit current ideality factor, series solar cell are estimated considering it as an optimization
resistance, and shunt resistance, from experimental cur- problem solved by hybrid PSO and simulated anneal-
rent–voltage characteristic curves. A wide search range ing as a metaheuristic optimization algorithm based on

13
International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology

experimentally measured current–voltage data. Both sin-

gle- and double-diode models have been considered. The
estimated parameters are shunt resistance, series resistance,
photocurrent, diode saturation current, and the ideality fac-
tor. The parameter estimation has been achieved via mini-
mizing the difference between measured and calculated data
of the solar cell current. The proposed hybrid PSO/simulated
annealing (PSOSA) algorithm overcomes the premature con-
verge problem by achieving a global minimum and avoid-
ing trapping in local minimums in all test runs. Moreover,
the algorithm performance was evaluated via comparing it
with other optimization algorithms, namely conventional
PSO, pattern search, improved artificial bee colony, har-
mony search, and simulated annealing. The comparison
results reveal the capability of the proposed algorithm to
solve the problem in hand compared with other tested algo-
rithms. The proposed hybrid PSOSA algorithm showed bet-
ter results compared with those of conventional PSO algo-
rithm in terms of standard deviation which decreased from
4.3154 × 10−4 to 4.07 × 10−17 and the root mean squared
error decreased from 1.52 × 10−3 to 7.73 × 10−4. Moreover,
among all investigated algorithms (such as harmony search,
improved artificial bee colony, simulated annealing, and
pattern search) the proposed approach showed the best per-
formance in terms of root mean squared error and mean
absolute error. The root mean squared error was 9.95 × 10−4,
10.00 × 10−4, 190.00 × 10−4, 149.36 × 10−4, and 7.73 × 10−4,
respectively, while the mean absolute error was 6.78 × 10−4,
28.51 × 10−4, 27.84 × 10−4, 51.10 × 10−4, and 42.146 × 10−4, Fig. 5  a PV/T collector; b Tuning of the inclination of the PV/T col-
respectively, which reveals the superior accuracy of the pro- lector with PSO (reproduced with permission from Tabet et al. 2014)
posed approach compared with other existing approaches.
that tilt angle should be changed throughout the year to
Photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) systems obtain maximum efficiency in a range of 10°–60°. The
received solar irradiation was increased by 10.06–58.34 W/
PV/T is a hybrid system that utilizes the solar energy to m2 when the optimized tilt angle was used. The block struc-
simultaneously generate electricity and heat (Al-Waeli et al. ture of the proposed PSO algorithm is shown in Fig. 5b.
2017). However, the main disadvantages of such systems are Shi et al. (2015) proposed a hybrid control model for a
their high installation cost, low available power, and low PV system based on dormant PSO algorithm and conven-
conversion efficiency. Moreover, the non-uniform distribu- tional incremental conductance algorithm. First, the former
tion of the solar radiation striking the surface of the PV algorithm is used to determine global peak area and then
panel results in reducing the power output of the system due the latter algorithm is used to determine the maximum out-
to unequal characteristics of the PV cells. Therefore, opti- put power of photovoltaic arrays. Dormant PSO is activated
mization of the PV/T systems is highly desirable (Michael when partially shaded conditions are fulfilled and is used to
et al. 2015). find global peak area. The particles are switched to dormant
In Tabet et al. (2014), PSO method was applied to obtain state one by one. Once all activate particles are converted,
the optimal tilt angle setting of PV/T collector shown in the global peak area is located. Then, incremental conduct-
Fig. 5a to overcome the large data sets required to assess ance algorithm is used as it guarantees the performance sta-
the performance of the system which is time consuming and bility for single peak curve (Sera et al. 2013). The obtained
expensive. Geographical terrain inputs (altitude, longitude, results revealed that dormant PSO has significantly low
and attitude) were used as input variables to calculate the computational time, improves the efficiency, and reduces
solar irradiance, while tilt angle of the PV/T collector was the output waveform fluctuation compared with the conven-
considered as the main parameter to be optimized to maxi- tional PSO and incremental conductance algorithms. Sawant
mize the PV/T efficiency. The optimization results indicated and Bhattar (2016) applied a PSO algorithm to optimize PV

13

system considering dynamic meteorological parameters and
partially shaded conditions which may impair the perfor-
mance of photovoltaic system as it results in hot spot phe-
nomenon in the PV cell. The PSO performance has been
assessed considering different shading patterns and has
been compared with perturb-and-observe approach under
the same operating conditions. The obtained results revealed
the ability of PSO to determine maximum power point under
dynamic weather conditions. Mansour et al. (2017) used
PSO to maximize the received solar radiation by solar panel
surface by selecting the optimum orientation. The PSO algo-
rithm resulted in increasing the received solar radiation by
11.59, 17.53, and 39.9 kWh/m2 compared with those of con-
ventional south-facing attained solar panels for yearly, semi-
yearly and seasonal periods, respectively. Mao et al. (2017)
proposed two-stage PSO algorithm to optimize PV system
performance considering maximum power point tracking
control and multiple peaks in the output current–voltage
curve. The proposed algorithm consists of shuffled frog leap-
ing algorithm coupled with traditional PSO algorithm, this
combination ensures accurate and fast searching and avoids
trapping in local minima. Moreover, to enhance the conver-
gence speed of the proposed algorithm, an adaptive speed
factor is also combined into the proposed two-stage PSO.
The obtained results from numerical simulation experiments
showed that the convergence speed of the proposed algo-
rithm is twice the convergence speed of the conventional
PSO. Moreover, the maximum power point tracking error
was decreased from 26.33% in the case of conventional PSO
to 2.141% in the case of the proposed algorithm, while the
output power was increased by 15.03 W when the proposed
algorithm was compared with the conventional one.
Solar power tower
A solar power tower system, also known as heliostat power
plants or central tower power plants, is a complex solar sys-
tem in which a tower is used to receive the focused sunlight
(Kumar et al. 2017a). It is composed of many subsystems
such as a heliostat field, receiver, tower, plant control, power
conversion system, heat transport system, and optionally
thermal energy storage system (Rea et al. 2018). The solar
radiation is concentrated by the heliostat field and then
reflected onto a receiver. Then the received concentrated
solar energy is utilized to generate heat. Finally, this heat is
used as an input to a thermodynamic cycle in which elec-
tricity is produced. The optimization of the performance of
such systems is highly desirable (Bravo and Friedrich 2018).
In Li et al. (2017, 2018), a hybrid PSO and GA algo-
rithm was proposed to determine the maximum potential
daily energy collection of a heliostat via optimizing the
field layout. The filed efficiency and the optimal combina-
tion of heliostats are also determined. Optical efficiency
13
International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology
was determined based on four different factors (Collado and
Guallar 2012; Collado 2008, 2009), namely cosine factor,
intercept factor, atmospheric attenuation factor, and shadow-
ing and blocking factor. Seven different parameters are used
to control the optimization process, namely two accelera-
tion coefficients, probability of crossover operation in the
GA part of the hybrid PSO-GA, probability of mutation of
the GA operation in the GA part of the hybrid PSO-GA,
and two random unknown numbers. Following optimiza-
tion, the highest and the lowest observed increase in energy
collection are 1.8 × 105 MJ and 0.9 × 105 MJ for the summer
and winter solstices, respectively. Moreover, the highest and
lowest energy collected per unit cost are achieved during the
summer and winter solstices, respectively.
Farges et  al. (2018) proposed PSO and Monte Carlo
algorithms to optimize the performance of solar power
tower considering the following design parameters: width,
height and tilt angle of the receiver and the tower height.
The former algorithm is used to maximize the yearly col-
lected thermal energy at the solar receiver, while the latter
is used to maximize yearly optical efficiency. Optical effi-
ciency was determined based on mirror reflectivity, cosine
effect, interception efficiency, shading, blocking and spill-
age phenomena, and atmospheric attenuation. The obtained
results, based on the optimized design, indicated that the
collected thermal energy has increased by 23.5%, and the
optical efficiency of heliostat field has been enhanced by
9%. In Piroozmand and Boroushaki (2016), the optimal
design and layout of a multiple solar power tower system
via applying PSO investigated to overcome the problem of
impairing the optical efficiency due to shading effects. As
Fig. 6  Influence of adjacent heliostats orientations on shading loss
(reproduced with permission from Piroozmand and Boroushaki 2016)
International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology

shown in Fig. 6, heliostats layout and orientations lead to productivity. Moreover, most of the aforementioned models
different shading losses which have a great effect on the are based on trial-and-error procedures which may affect the
overall system efficiency. The obtained results revealed that estimated results. To overcome these problems, Al-Sulttani
the optical performance of the multiple solar power tower et al. (2017a) proposed PSO algorithm to estimate the hourly
system has been improved and the annual efficiency reached yield of double-slope solar still with rubber scrapers shown
54.58% using the proposed PSO algorithm. The optical per- in Fig. 7a. The obtained results showed a good consistency
formance was enhanced by 0.21% and 0.26% by applying the between the predicted and experimental results of the solar
proposed approach compared with the case without consid- still yield based on the percentage of absolute relative error
ering the interactions and the separated single-tower fields, as statistical evaluation criterion as shown in Fig. 7b. The
respectively. proposed approach used an accurate PSO optimization tech-
nique coupled with the use of an accurate experimental data.
Solar stills Therefore, the proposed PSO model presented better results
compared with Dunkle’s model, as the latter used traditional
A solar still is a simple device in which solar energy is uti- trial-and-error methods which may lead to a lack of accuracy
lized to distillate brackish water (Sharshir et al. 2017a; Abed in the final results. The coefficient of variation (COV) of
et al. 2017; Elsheikh et al. 2018). Brackish water is inserted the obtained results from the proposed model and Dunkle’s
into the still basin and heated up by sun radiation passing model was 4.1% and 14.1%, respectively, which reveals the
through a glass cover. After water is heated up, it begins to high accuracy of the proposed model.
evaporate, and the evaporated water is cooled down when it
strikes the inner side of the glass cover and begins to con-
dense as purified water.
Conclusion
Many researchers have investigated different designs and
techniques to enhance the solar still productivity (Sharshir
This paper has reviewed previous published works on the
et al. 2017b, c; Dsilva Winfred Rufuss et al. 2016; Pan-
application of PSO in different solar systems including solar
chal and Patel 2017). One of the important parameters that
collectors, solar cells, solar power towers, photovoltaic/ther-
affect the solar still productivity is the inclination angle of
mal systems, and solar stills. PSO has been an important
the glass cover. It has been reported that, to maximize the
tool in optimizing the performance of different engineer-
still productivity, the glass cover inclination angle must be
ing systems. It has the ability to find global maxima and
approximately equal to the latitude angle of the location
minima solution for non-linear problems characterized by
(Khalifa 2011). For locations with latitude angle less than
the existence of many local minima. The obtained results
10°, although the solar radiation that enters the solar still is
by PSO for different studies showed a good agreement with
increased by using glass cover inclination angle equal to the
experimental results which testifies the robustness of the
location latitude, the condensed water at the inner surface of
method. Compared with other optimization methods, such
the glass cover may fall down toward the basin of the solar
as GA, simulated annealing algorithm, chaos particle swarm
still. This may result in impairing the solar still productivity
optimization algorithm, and artificial bee swarm optimiza-
and affect the accuracy of any mathematical model used to
tion algorithm, PSO showed the best performance. Moreo-
estimate the solar still performance (Abdallah et al. 2008).
ver, the modifications done in PSO algorithm as well as the
To overcome this problem, rubber scrapers have been used
hybridization of PSO with other algorithms result in better
in double-slope solar still which results in enhancing the
performance in terms of execution, accuracy, and efficiency.
productivity by 63% (Al-Sulttani et al. 2017b). Many mathe-
Further studies with more focus on integrating different opti-
matical models have been built to predict the hourly produc-
mization methods as well as artificial neural networks with
tivity of this kind of solar stills (Tripathi and Tiwari 2006;
PSO algorithm should be carried out. Also, the investiga-
Tiwari et al. 2003; Tsilingiris 2009). However, these models
tion of dynamic PSO to solve multi-objective optimization
suffer from the lack of accuracy in estimating the still pro-
problem should be considered.
ductivity as they neglect the effect of the condensed water
falling from the glass cover to the basin on the estimated

13
 International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology

Fig. 7  a Double-slope solar still with rubber scrapers; b Absolute relative error (ARE) distribution for the proposed PSO-HYSS model, Al-
Sulttani et al. model, and Dunkle’s model (reproduced with permission from Al-Sulttani et al. 2017a)

Compliance with ethical standards  Alhmoud L, Wang B (2018) A review of the state-of-the-art in
Conflict of interest  The authors declared that there is no conflict of
interest.
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