Solar Engineering of Thermal Processes, 4th Edition

Preface to the First Edition

When we started to revise our earlier book, Solar Energy Thermal Processes, it quickly became evident that the years since 1974 had brought many significant developments in our knowledge of solar processes. What started out to be a second edition of the 1974 book quickly grew into a new work, with new analysis and design tools, new insights into solar process operation, new industrial developments, and new ideas on how solar energy can be used. The result is a new book, substantially broader in scope and more detailed than the earlier one. Perhaps less than 20 percent of this book is taken directly from Solar Energy Thermal Processes, although many diagrams have been reused and the general outline of the work is similar. Our aim in preparing this volume has been to provide both a reference book and a text. Throughout it we have endeavored to present quantitative methods for estimated solar process performance.

In the first two chapters we treat solar radiation, radiation data, and the processing of the data to get it in forms needed for calculation of process performance. The next set of three chapters is a review of some heat transfer principles that are particularly useful and a treatment of the radiation properties of opaque and transparent materials. Chapters 6 through 9 go into detail on collectors and storage, as without an understanding of these essential components in a solar process system it is not possible to understand how systems operate. ...