SPF Institut für SolartechnikProjektleiter SPF, Dozierender
+41 58 257 48 18andreas.reber@ost.ch
We combine solar energy with innovative water treatment technologies to enable communities or institutions to purify water on-site. This includes the design of suitable PV systems in conjunction with water treatment methods such as Gravity Driven Membranes (GDM) or solar water disinfection (SoWaDis).
In this partnership, teaching content is developed and delivered together with our partner university “United Methodist University of Liberia” (UMU). The created capacity is applied in water and sanitation projects of our local partner NGOs.
In this project a calorimeter was built for the measurement of the specific heat cp of heat transfer fluids with a measurement uncertainty of ±0.3 %.
The apparatus will be used for quality assurance at the SPF and is available for measuring fluids of third parties as well. This brings significant advantages for manufacturers and suppliers of heat transfer fluids that can deliver physical properties of their fluids with higher accuracy, for facility operators of large systems that can survey the energy balance of their systems with higher accuracy, and for researchers and developers that may determine more accurately the energy balance of prototype systems that use heat transfer media other than water.
Clean water, a reliable power supply and cooling systems for medicines and vaccines are not a given in many rural hospitals in Africa. To ensure better healthcare also in remote regions, the EU is supporting SophiA project, which relies on modular containers to produce drinking water, heat, cold and electricity using solar energy. SPF Institute for Solar Technology is part of the international team responsible for the solar technology, the Life Cycle Assessment of the SophiA systems as well as the energy management and control of the subsystems.
SPF is contributing to the development of qualified people to meet the future demand for the increasing market of renewable energy power plants in Indonesia.
The CCT-Bat project is to develop a system test for home batteries, with which all relevant operating conditions can be tested within three days using the hardware in the loop principle, in order to determine the cycle efficiency and other key performance indicators. Different target functions of the systems (self-consumption, electricity tariffs, and grid benefits), as well as single and multi-family houses and different load profiles will be considered.
Within the EU project Hybrid-BioVGE an innovative system for heating and cooling is developed. The cooling device is based on a Variable Geometry Ejection (VGE) cooler. Driving energy is heat from solar collectors or from biomass. SPF is supporting the development of collectors that deliver heat at 75 – 90 °C, and is testing the heating and cooling system with the established Concise Cycle Test (CCT) method. This method is specifically adapted in order to be able to test also cooling systems.
The project is supported by the research programme H2020 of the European Union – grant agreement ID: 818012, acronym Hybrid-BioVGE
