• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.28 no.11
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• pp.1019-1025
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• 2019

The aim of this study was to analyze the light traits in a solar light-collector device and its effects on lettuce growth at an early growth stage. The three hyper parameters used were the reflector diameter (2 cm and 4 cm), coating inside the reflector (chrome-coated, non-coated) and distance from the light fiber (15 cm and 20 cm). The results showed that light efficiency, which is the ratio of light intensity inside the fiber to the solar intensity, improved by 41.1 % when using a 2 cm diameter chrome-coated reflector at a distance of 15 cm from the light fiber; whereas it only improved by 20.6% when a non-coated reflector was used. As the reflector size was increased to 4 cm, the light efficiency for the coated and non-coated reflectors increased by 28.5 % and 26.4 %, respectively, hence, no significant difference was observed. When the light fiber was placed at a distance of 20 cm, the increase in light efficiency with coating treatment was 8 % higher than without coating treatment. We also compared the efficiency of light-fiber treatment with that of LED treatment in our lettuce nursery, and observed that the plants exhibited better growth with light-fiber treatment. We observed an average increase of 1.7 cm in leaf height, $7cm^2/plant$ increase in leaf area, and 32 mm increase in root length upon light-fiber treatment as opposed to those observed with LED treatment. These findings indicate that the collector light-fiber is economically feasible and it improves lettuce growth compared with the LED treatment.

• Journal of Biosystems Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.64-76
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• 1978

A dimensional supply of petroleum fuels and increased competition for petroleum products has made the conservation of energy in grain drying an important cost and management factor. Research on solar grain drying is directed toward utilization of a renewable energy source as an alternative to petroleum fuels for drying. There are many technical and economic problems in accepting and adopting solor energy as a new energy source for grain drying. The purpose of this study are to assess the state of the art of solar grain drying and to find out the problems by reviewing literatures available. The results obtained may be summarized as follows; 1.It may be considered that the weather conditions in October of Korea was satisfactory for the forced natural air and solar heated air drying. 2. Solar energy is considered more applicable to low-temperature, In-storage drying systems than to high-temperature, high-speed drying systems. In-storage drying systems require low levels of heat input. The costs of collector systems to provide low temperature are considerably cheaper than for high-temperature systems. 3. Tubular type collector made of polyvinyle film seems to be the most practical at this stage of development and black-painted bare-plate collectors mounted on the outside of a typical, round, low-temperature drying bin can supply an appreciable amount of the energy efficiently needed for low-temperature grain drying at a lower cost. 4. All of the grains in solar drying tests was successfully dried up to safe storaged moisture levels without significant spoilage. Drying rates with solar system were faster than natural air drying systems, and usually a little slower than similar low-temperature electric drying systems. 5. Final grain moisture levels were lower in solar tests than in natural air tests, and generally higher than in tests with continuous heated air. 6. Savings of energy by use of solar collectors ranged from 23% to 55%, compared to the natural and electric ileated air drying systems. However, total drying cost effectiteness tvas not significant. Therefore, it is desirable that solar grain dry-ing sIFstems tvhich could be suitable for multiple heating purposes on farms shouldbe developed. 7. Supplemental heat with solar radiation did little to reduce air flow requirementsbut refuced drying time and increased the p\ulcornerobability of successful drying duringdrying poriod.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.36 no.5
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• pp.73-89
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• 2016

To assure maximum economic benefits and the energy performance of solar water heating systems, the proper sizing of components and operating conditions need to be optimized. In recent years, a number of studies to design optimally solar water heating systems have been tried. This paper presents a design method for optimizing the various capacity-related and installation-related design variables based on life cycle cost using a genetic algorithm. The design variables considered in this study included the types and numbers of solar collector and auxiliary heaters; the types of storage tanks and heat exchangers; the solar collector slope; mass flow rates of the fluid on the hot and cold sides. The suggested method was applied for optimizing a solar water heating system for an elementary school in Seoul, South Korea. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed optimization method was assessed by analyzing the obtained optimal solutions of six case studies, each of which was simulated with different solar fractions. It is observed that a trade-off between the equipment cost and the energy cost results in an optimal design that yields the lowest life cycle cost. Therefore, it could be helpful to apply the optimal solar water heating system by comparing the various design solutions obtained by using the optimization method instead of the engineer's experience and intuition.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.49-62
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• 2018

This study aims to analyze the performance of solar thermal system with heat pump for domestic hot water and heat supply. There are four types of system. Systems are categorized based on the existence of a heat pump and the ways of controlling the working fluid circulating from the collector. Working fluid is controlled by either temperature level (categorized as system 1 and 2) or sequential flow (system 3 and 4). Heat balance of the system, the solar fraction, hot water and heating supply rates, and performance of heat pump are analyzed using TRNSYS and TESS component programs. Technical specifications of the main facilities are as follow; the area of the collector to $25m^2$, the volumes of the main tank and the buffer tank to $0.5m^3$ and $0.8m^3$, respectively. Heating capacity of the heat pump in the heating mode is set to 30,000 kJ / hr. Hot water supply set 65 liters per person each day, total heat transfer coefficient of the building to 1,500 kJ / kg.K. Indoor temperature is kept steadily around $22^{\circ}C$. The results are as follows; 6 months average solar fraction of system 1 turns out to be 39%, which is 6.7% higher than system 2 without the heat pump, indicating a 25% increase of solar fraction compared to that of system 2. In addition, the solar fraction of system 1 is 2% higher than that of system 3. Hot water and heating supply rate of system 1 are 93% and 35%, respectively. Considering the heat balance of the system, higher heat efficiency, and solar fraction, as whole, it can be concluded that system 1 is the most suitable system for hot water and heat supply.

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.357-370
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• 1982

Recent concern regarding price and availability of fossil fuels has spurred the interest in alternative sources for farm crop drying. Among the available options such as biomass energy, wind power, nuclear energy and solar energy etc., the increasing attention is being directed to the utilization of heat from solar energy especially for farm crop drying. Even though solar energy is dispersed over a large land area and only a relatively small amount of energy can be simply collected, the advantages of solar energy is that the energy is free, non-polluting. The study reported here was designed to help supply the informations for the development of simple and relatively inexpensive solar warehouse for farm crop drying and storage. Specifically, the objectives of this study were to determine the performance of the solar collector fabricated, to compare solar supplemented heat drying with natural air drying and to develop a simulation model of temperature in stored grain, which can be used to study the effects due to changes in ambient air temperature. For those above objectives, solar collector was fabricated from available materials. Corrugated steel galvanized sheet, painted flat black, was used as absorbers and clear 0.2mm polyethylene sheet was the cover material. The warehouse for rough rice drying and storage was constructed with concrete block, and the solar collector was used as the roof of warehouse instead of original roofing system of it. The results obtained in this study were as follows: 1. The thermal efficiency of the solar collector was average 26 percent and the overall heat transfer coefficient of the collector was approximately $25kJ/hr.m^2\;^{\circ}K$. 2. Solar heated air was sufficient to dry one cubic meter of rough rice from 23.5 to 15.0 percent in 7 days and natural air was able to dry the same amount of rough rice from 20.0 to 5 percent in l2 days. 3. Drying with solar heat reduced the required drying time to dry the same amount of rough rice into a half compared to natural air drying, but overdrying problems of the bottom layer were so severe that these problems should be thoroughly analyzed. 4. Simulation model of temperature in stored grain was developed and the results of predicted temperature agreed well with test results. 5. Based on those simulated temperature, changes in the grain-temperature were a large at the points of the wallside and the damage of the grain would be severe at the contact area of wall.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.37-44
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• 2005

An experimental study was conducted to analyze performance of a heating system with variation of control logic of the system. The system uses a solar as heat source and composed with heat pump that uses R-22 as working fluid. The difference between the developed system and the commercially available heating system is working fluid. The solar assisted heating system which was widely distributed in the market uses water as a working fluid. It could be freezing in case of the temperature drops down under freezing point. The anti-freezing fluids such as methyl-alcohol or ethylene-glycol are mixed with the water to protect the freezing phenomena. However, the system developed in this study uses a refrigerant as a working fluid. It makes the system to run under zero degree temperature conditions. Another difference of the developed system compare with commercial available one is auxiliary heating method. The developed system has removed an auxiliary electric heater that has been used in conventional solar assisted heating system. Instead of the auxiliary electric heater, an air source heat exchanger which generally used as an evaporator of a heat pump was adapted as a backup heating device of the developed system. As results, an efficiency of the developed system is higher than a solar assisted heat pump with auxiliary electric heater. The merit of the developed system is on the performance increment when the system operates at a lower solar energy climate conditions. In case of the developed system operates at a normal condition, COP of the solar collector driven heat pump is higher than the air source heat exchanger driven heat pump's.

• Solar Energy
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• v.20 no.4
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• pp.31-43
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• 2000

A model house with a "Ondol" heating working with solar energy and supplied by circulation air was investigated both experimentally and theoretically, A calculation method was developed for interpreting the measured values and for comparing several variants, This calculation method together with the measurement result is presented in the following. The gain in energy of the collector(Trombe wall type with TWD) measured on a particularly selected winter day with plenty of radiation amounted to approximately 31 % of the total solar radiation.

• Proceedings of the KWS Conference
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• 2001.10a
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• pp.217-219
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• 2001

• Korean Journal of Agricultural Science
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.156-165
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• 1983

This experiment was carried out to elucidate the drying characteristics of onion and dehumidifying effect of air using the silica gel and to reuse it by solar collector. The results were summarized as follows. 1. It takes 14hours to regenerate to silica gel of 8% moisture content from saturated silica gel in conditions of $28^{\circ}c$ temperature and 55% relative humidity. 2. When sample was recycled through solar collector, the result of drying was 1/2 times more efficient than that of mat drying. 3. Average thermal efficiency of solar collector was 25% during the experimental period. 4. Browning extent was reduced to 1/2 times at heated air blow drying system using drying chamber.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.29 no.2
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• pp.47-54
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• 2009

The amount of incident rays over inclination according to direction has been widely utilized as important data m installing solar thermal systems. To optimize the incident solar radiation, the slope, that is the angle between the plane surface in question and the horizontal, and the solar azimuth angles are needed for these solar thermal systems. This is because the performance of the solar thermal systems in much affected by angle and direction of incident rays. Recognizing that factors mentioned above are of importance, actual experiment on the moving route of the sun have been performed in this research to obtain the angle of inclination with which the maximum incident rays can be absorbed. After all, the standard for designing highly optimized solar thermal systems will be provided for designers and employees working in the solar collector related industries.