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Renewable Energy and Advanced Smart Insulation Technologies for Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs)

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Energy Sustainability".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 13583

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Saim Memon

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Engineering, Arden University, Coventry CV3 4FJ, UK
Interests: net-zero energy buildings; vacuum insulation; hybrid vacuum glazed photovoltaic-thermal (VPV/T) collector; vacuum glazing; applied transparent PV films; PDLC films; applied thermoelectric systems; ultra-high vacuum sealing materials; fast-charging batteries and charging station for electric vehicles
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

I am very ecstatic to invite you to submit your manuscript to this Special Issue that focuses on the novel development of renewable energy and advanced smart insulation technologies for nearly vacuum insulation and renewable energy technologies for zero energy buildings.

A global challenge of increasing carbon emissions is generally acceptable and by now has reached an alarming rate, causing fluctuating impacts on temperature and sea levels. Sustainability is at the forefront, as is the ambition to minimise carbon emissions from 1990 levels to 80% by 2050. Further, there is a serious challenge particularly in the energy field of balancing the gap between peak-demand and generating capacity. In order to reduce such a security-of-supply risk, retrofitting buildings with renewable energy and advanced smart insulation technologies is a particular focus by reason of its considerable energy consumption due to space-cooling in hot–arid climates and space-heating in cold–arid climates than in any other sector. In spite of having a number of retrofitting measures and insulation technologies that have already improved heating/cooling systems as retrofitting measures, there is a scope of significantly minimising energy consumption with intelligent renewable energy systems and smart insulation technologies that have a significant scope of controlling the solar heat gain, reducing the heating/cooling loads, generating electricity with integrated renewable energy systems whilst reducing the heat loss/cooling loss through windows and fabric, leading our buildings to zero energy buildings (ZEBs). The notion of ZEBs is to achieve an integrated approach of renewable energy, heat storage, intelligent energy systems and vacuum insulation technologies.

This Special Issue is multidisciplinary, and prospective authors are invited to contribute their novel research and submit the state-of-the-art research work in the following areas and/or within the scope of this area.

  • Solar thermal systems;
  • Building-integrated renewable energy;
  • Solar thermal vacuum engineering;
  • Smart windows;
  • Vacuum insulation;
  • Building retrofitting technologies;
  • Solar collectors;
  • Solar heating and cooling technologies;
  • Solar architecture and building integration;
  • Intelligent energy systems for ZEBs

Dr. Saim Memon
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

12 pages, 612 KiB  
Article
Energy and Exergy Analyses on Seasonal Comparative Evaluation of Water Flow Cooling for Improving the Performance of Monocrystalline PV Module in Hot-Arid Climate
by Ali Sohani, Mohammad Hassan Shahverdian, Hoseyn Sayyaadi, Siamak Hoseinzadeh, Saim Memon, Giuseppe Piras and Davide Astiaso Garcia
Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 6084; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116084 - 28 May 2021
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3419
Abstract
Solar irradiation in hot-arid climatic countries results in increased temperatures, which is one of the major factors affecting the power generation efficiency of monocrystalline photovoltaic (PV) systems, posing performance and degradation challenges. In this paper, the efficiency of a water-flow cooling system to [...] Read more.
Solar irradiation in hot-arid climatic countries results in increased temperatures, which is one of the major factors affecting the power generation efficiency of monocrystalline photovoltaic (PV) systems, posing performance and degradation challenges. In this paper, the efficiency of a water-flow cooling system to increase the output of a monocrystalline PV module with a rated capacity of 80 W is studied from both energy and exergy perspectives. The energy and exergy tests are performed for each season of the year, with and without cooling. The energy and exergy efficiencies, as well as the commodity exergy values, are used to compare the photovoltaic device with and without cooling. The findings are based on the experimental data that were collected in Tehran, Iran as an investigated case study in a country with a hot-arid climate. The findings show that when water-flow cooling is used, the values of the three efficiency metrics change significantly. In various seasons, improvements in regular average energy efficiency vary from 7.3% to 12.4%. Furthermore, the achieved increase in exergy efficiency is in the 13.0% to 19.6% range. Using water flow cooling also results in a 12.1% to 18.4% rise in product exergy. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renewable Energy and Advanced Smart Insulation Technologies for Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs))
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21 pages, 8248 KiB  
Article
Thermal Analysis of a New Sliding Smart Window Integrated with Vacuum Insulation, Photovoltaic, and Phase Change Material
by Mostafa Ahmed, Ali Radwan, Ahmed Serageldin, Saim Memon, Takao Katsura and Katsunori Nagano
Sustainability 2020, 12(19), 7846; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12197846 - 23 Sep 2020
Cited by 13 | Viewed by 4219
Abstract
A zero-energy building (ZEB) requires an innovative integration of technologies, in which windows play a paramount role in energy reduction, storage, and generation. This study contributes to four innovative designs of sliding smart windows. It integrates air-gap (AG), phase change material (PCM), photovoltaic [...] Read more.
A zero-energy building (ZEB) requires an innovative integration of technologies, in which windows play a paramount role in energy reduction, storage, and generation. This study contributes to four innovative designs of sliding smart windows. It integrates air-gap (AG), phase change material (PCM), photovoltaic (PV), and vacuum glazing (VG) technologies. These smart sliding windows are proposed to generate electricity along with achieving efficient thermal insulations and heat storage simultaneously. A two-dimensional multiphysics thermal model that couples the PCM melting and solidification model, PV model, natural convection in the cavity, and the surface-to-surface radiation model in the vacuum gap are developed for the first time. The model is validated with data in the literature. The transient simulations were carried out to investigate the thermo-electrical performance of a window with an area of 1 m by 1 m for the meteorological conditions of Kuwait city on the 10th of June 2018, where the window was oriented to south direction. The results showed that the total solar heat energy gain per unit window area is 2.6 kWh, 0.02 kWh, 0.22 kWh, 1.48 kWh, and 0.2 kWh for the double AG, AG + PV + PCM + VG, PV + PCM + VG, AG + PV + PCM, and the ventilated AG + PV + PCM + VG, respectively. The results elucidate the advantages of the integration of VG in this integrated sliding smart window. The daily generated PV electrical energy in these systems is around 1.3 kWh, 1.43 kWh, and 1.38 kWh for the base case with double AG, PV + PCM + VG, and the ventilated AG + PV + PCM + VG respectively per unit window area. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renewable Energy and Advanced Smart Insulation Technologies for Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs))
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9 pages, 3132 KiB  
Article
Laser Sealing for Vacuum Plate Glass with PbO-TiO2-SiO2-RxOy Solder
by Hong Miao, Lingcong Zhang, Sixing Liu, Shanwen Zhang, Saim Memon and Bi Zhu
Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3118; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083118 - 13 Apr 2020
Cited by 9 | Viewed by 2734
Abstract
Laser sealing for vacuum plate glass is a key step in developing the cost-effective smart vacuum-glass window for the drive towards net-zero energy buildings. In this paper, the pores, cracks, and interface with laser welding are analyzed in depth using PbO-TiO2-SiO [...] Read more.
Laser sealing for vacuum plate glass is a key step in developing the cost-effective smart vacuum-glass window for the drive towards net-zero energy buildings. In this paper, the pores, cracks, and interface with laser welding are analyzed in depth using PbO-TiO2-SiO2-RxOy system sealing solder to prepare vacuum flat glass. The microstructure of the sealing layer was analyzed by a BX41M-LED metallographic microscope, and the interfacial bonding characteristics were observed by thermal field emission scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The solder was analyzed by an energy spectrometer, and the influence of laser power, sealing temperature, and sealing speed on the gas holes and the crack sand interface separation of the sealing layer are reported. The results show that when the laser power reached 80 W at the welding speed of 2 mm/s, the bulk solder disappeared to most of the quantity and the sealing surface density was higher, due to which negligible pores and micro cracks were found. Thus, the sealing quality of the sealing layer is considered to be suitable when the temperature of 470 °C was maintained and the solder has 68.93% of Pb and 3.04% Si in the atom fraction to achieve the wet the glass substrate surface whilst improving the bonding quality. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renewable Energy and Advanced Smart Insulation Technologies for Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs))
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14 pages, 5908 KiB  
Article
Thermal Analysis of a New Neutron Shielding Vacuum Multiple Glass
by Shanwen Zhang, Min Kong, Saim Memon, Hong Miao, Yanjun Zhang and Sixing Liu
Sustainability 2020, 12(8), 3083; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12083083 - 12 Apr 2020
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2209
Abstract
The neutron shielding glass is widely used in nuclear/fusion plants. To improve its temperature resistance and heat insulation, a Gadolinium (Gd)-containing laminate vacuum multiple glass is proposed by using the vacuum insulation method. A 3D finite element model validated by theoretical calculation was [...] Read more.
The neutron shielding glass is widely used in nuclear/fusion plants. To improve its temperature resistance and heat insulation, a Gadolinium (Gd)-containing laminate vacuum multiple glass is proposed by using the vacuum insulation method. A 3D finite element model validated by theoretical calculation was developed to analyse the heat transfer path and numerical simulation of the multiple glass was carried out to obtain the temperature distribution and the maximum temperatures of the organic glass in relation to dynamic working temperatures, the sealing agent width, view size, and vacuum thermal conductivity. The results show that the vacuum layer between common glasses can make the work temperature of neutron shielding glass increase. The multiple glass has good heat-shielding performance and it is expected to work in a high-temperature environment. In addition, the vacuum layer between the common glasses and the sealing agent width decay with respect to the view size and vacuum thermal conductivity show an increase in the working temperature of the neutron shielding glass. It was concluded that the order of affecting the temperatures of the organic glass follows the pattern of: view size > vacuum thermal conductivity > sealing agent width. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Renewable Energy and Advanced Smart Insulation Technologies for Zero Energy Buildings (ZEBs))
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