Quick Facts about EME 811
Course Developer:
Dr. Lucas Witmer, Lecturer, Department of Energy and Environmental Engineering, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, The Pennsylvania State University.
Course Structure:
The course consists of 12 weekly lessons delivered through this site, with each lesson accompanied by reading quizzes and graded activities. Some weeks are reserved for the work on the project proposal, which will be final deliverable in the end of the semester. All course assignments are submitted through the Penn State course management system - Canvas. Please see Syllabus and Orientation for more details.
Overview:
Solar thermal energy conversion can be applied to a wide array of industrial and district applications, which provide benefits in avoided fuel costs for water and steam production in industry. EME 811 covers the physical materials used for solar energy conversion to useful thermal energy; the function and performance of non-concentrating and concentrating solar thermal energy systems; the markets and thermal requirements for industrial projects; and applications of solar thermal energy to buildings (heating/cooling), chemical processing, fuel synthesis, drying, and desalination.
This course is offered as part of the Repository of Open and Affordable Materials at Penn State. You are welcome to use and reuse materials that appear on this site (other than those copyrighted by others) subject to the licensing agreement linked to the bottom of this and every page. Please note: This course is no longer being actively taught, but we believe the material remains valuable and relevant. However, the content has not been updated since 2017, so some graphs and data may be outdated.