Design Procedure of Solar Systems for Green Buildings - Essay Example

Design procedure of solar systems for green buildings The design and construction procedure for the solar panels entailedin the green buildings for environmental friendliness and energy saving capacity is mainly a standard procedure undertaken in similarity in many design and manufacturing companies. Typically, solar cells refer to the slender disks entailed in the conversion of sunlight into electricity. The design and construction have facilitated its application into various devices like calculators, telecommunication devices and lastly in the design of the buildings. The solar panels provided the much needed power for running of homes at any time of the day provided there is direct sunlight. The procedure for design and constructions of solar panels for building takes mainly a three step procedure. These includes the selection of the raw material, the manufacturing and lastly quality control (Gevorkian, 99). Raw material selection Design and manufacture of solar panels apply the use of the quartz or quartzite grave, carbon elements, phosphorus, boron, titanium dioxide and copper for different purposes at different stages in the production of the products. The elementary or the base material entailed in design and construction of solar panels is silicon. The silicon is usually not pure. The selection of the appropriate silicon dioxide is undertaken from quartz or quartzite gravels (Krebs & Frederik, 97). The manufacturing outline The manufacturing outline / process begins with the purification of silicon. Collected quartzite gravel or even quartz material is normally put in a positioned in an electric arc furnace for the heating and separation of oxygen elements in it through the application of carbon arc. The generated compound is normally silicon with high levels of purity having close to one percent impurity levels. The purity level is important in other industries but in the solar panels manufacture industry. Further purification is undertaken through the application of the floating zone technique in which a rod of impure silicon is continuously passed through a well heated sector several times in one direction. The procedure normally drags the final impurities towards the end with every passing. The silicon collected in the end is labelled as impure, and it is hence removed while the rest is scooped off (Magee, 68). The next stage is called Czochralski method. In this method, a seed crystal portion of silicon is normally plunged and dipped into a melted polycrystalline silicon. The seed crystal is finally withdrawn then rotated to create a cylindrical ingot. This structure is mostly referred to as boule of silicon. This withdrawn ingot has very high level of purity since most of the impurity remain in the liquid. After the formation of the boule, the next stage is the formation of the silicon wafers. This process is mostly done through the use of the circular saw whose inner diameter aids in cutting of the rod. The use of diamond saws generates cuts whose widths resembles the size of the wafer. O.5 millimeters thick in normally the resulting width of the diamond cutting edge. In this process, nearly a half of the silicone degenerates and gets lost in the process (Gevorkian, 72). More portions may be lost in case the wafer is cut into hexagonal, square or rectangular shapes. The use of the rectangular or hexagonal shapes is normally very important since they fit effortlessly into the solar panel design thus utilizing the surface area of the solar cells. The wafers are finally polished to smoothen the saw marks but in the recent past, rough surfaces have found to absorb more light as compared to smooth surfaces. Manufactures have chosen to neglect the smoothening process (Hastings & Ove, 57). The subsequent procedure step is doping in which impurities are added on to the pure silicone solid. The impurities are main boron and phosphorus elements. The small amount of phosphorus and boron are added during Czochralski then they are sealed off back to back before placing into furnace for heating in a temperature slightly close to 1410 degrees in a condition ambience having phosphorus fume. This process facilitates the penetration of the phosphorus ions into silicon structure due to the porosity of silicone at a particular temperature. There is a proper regulation of the temperature to facilitate equal and uniform junction for the specific depths. New models are applied currently in shooting phosphorus into the silicon structure. After doping, electrical contacts that properly connect every solar cell to the subsequent cell and finally to the receiver for the generated current is designed in place. These contacts are normally very thin to avoid blocking the sunlight from coming to the cell and metals like silver, copper or nickel can be applied through a vacuum –evaporation. After insertion of the contacts, very thin segments of strips made of tin-coating are applied between cells (Gevorkian, 90). The following stage is the application of an anti-reflective coating since pure silicone is highly shiny and thus reflects virtually 35% of the sunlight that is a large amount of energy. The typical applied coating is the titanium dioxide (Krebs & Frederik, 95). The coating material is mostly heated until boiling then allowed to condense on the silicon surface. For commercial production, silicon nitride is mostly applicable for the generation of the anti-reflective coating property. Finally, the finished solar are normally designed into designed capsules that suit their purpose. The solar panels are finally attached to suitable frames for eventual readiness for installation. The frame applied are majorly aluminum or stainless steel with the addition of mylar or glass covering (Boxwell, 69). Before shipping to building zone or selling destinations, quality control must be undertaken on the product for assessment of the discrepancy and ensure only quality products reaches the markets. The quality control also checks into modes of improving the quality levels of the solar panel products. Apart from final inspection for quality, the product quality levels are also looked at every step of manufacture. This control is mainly possible through management of control measures, for instance, temperature, pressure, level of dopants and speed. Control measures are placed in the place for reducing any direct contact with air or even working regions. All the semi-conductors are consistently put into test to assess their reaction on current transmission, resistivity or even level of voltage capacity. Common challenges or problems with solar cells were derived from partial shedding, and thus the problem is normally reduced by the use of the shunt diodes (Boxwell, 28). In conclusion, the elementary material entailed in design and construction of solar panels is silicon. The silicon is usually not pure. The selection of the appropriate silicon dioxide is undertaken from quartz or quartzite gravels. The selected material is placed in an electric furnace for the process of application of carbon arc for the removal of the oxygen. The final outcome products are normally a molten silicone and carbon dioxide. The collected silicon still demands further purification for facilitation of the use in the solar cells. After collection of the pure silicon, it is then doped with phosphorus and boron for the production of extra electrons or creation of deficient electron condition thus resulting in a semi-conductor that can conduct electricity. This resulting silicon disks are typically very shiny and demand anti-reflective coating that is usually derived from titanium dioxide. The combination is of doped silicon, and an encapsulant of an entailed rubber or even butyryl plastic created a solar module that is well entrenched in ethylene vinyl acetate. The product is then closed in a film of polyester that backs it up. There is a glass cover on top of it and entailed electronic sectors mainly consists of the copper. Finally, the derived shape depends on the mode of the frame entailed in the design of the solar panel which can be steel or even aluminum components. Lastly, silicon aids in the cementing of all parts together. Afterwards, quality control and shipping to marketing destinations come in handy. Works cited Boxwell, Michael. Solar Electricity Handbook: A Simple Practical Guide to Solar Energy : How to Design and Install Photovoltaic Solar Electric Systems. Ryton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire, U.K: Greenstream Publishing, 2012. Print. Hastings, S R, and Ove Morck. Solar Air Systems: A Design Handbook. London: James & James, 2000. Print. Gevorkian, Peter. Large-scale Solar Power System Design: An Engineering Guide for Grid- Connected Solar Power Generation. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2011. Internet resource. Krebs, Frederik C. Polymeric Solar Cells: Materials, Design, Manufacture. Lancaster, PA: Destech Publications, 2010. Print. Magee, Steven. Solar Photovoltaic Design for Residential, Commercial and Utility Systems. La vergne, TN: The author, 2010. Print. Gevorkian, Peter. Solar Power in Building Design: The Engineers Complete Design Resource. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2008. Internet resource. Read More