Review of solar air collectors with thermal storage units

Thermal energy storage is one of the most efficient ways to store solar energy for heating air by energy collected from sun. The relative studies are involved to the type of collection with the type of storage, i.e. separated to each other or integrated. This review summarizes the previous works on solar air heaters with storage materials include greenhouse, encapsulation, and the latest development in the solar thermal energy storage with air as a heat transfer fluid. The recent researches focused on the phase change materials (PCMs), as latent heat storage is more efficient than sensible heat storage. It has been appeared that PCM with high latent heat and suitable geometry are required for optimum thermal performance of solar air heater. The recent designs of solar air heaters with thermal storage units reduced the cost and the volume when integrated in one product. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.