This September, Viessmann and Wilo, two German manufacturers of solar thermal equipment, opened a training centre at Kazan State Power Engineering University (KSPEU) in Russia, as part of KSPEU’s Industrial Heat Power Engineering and Heat Supply Systems department led by Professor Yuriy Vankov. To allow for the testing of efficient heating technology, the laboratory includes a heat pump, a flat plate collector and two types of storage tanks.

“The new laboratory is a good example of a mutually beneficial partnership between universities and equipment producers. While we teach students about the latest technology, businesses get the specialists they need to implement that technology in real-life projects," Vankov is quoted as saying in an article on tatar-inform.ru.

Petr Petrushenkov, who works at Viessmann Academy in Russia, said that he is particularly interested in combinations of heat pump and solar collectors: “In Germany, similar installations are widely used in winter. However, because Russia has a different climate, we still need to figure out exactly how we can use this type of system type in our region.”

Viessmann Academy’s training room with new heating equipment made in Germany in the form of a 10.2 kW brine heat pump and a Vitosol 100-F flat plate collector

Solar heat can be stored on site in either a buffer tank or another sort of intermediate tank to be used as a source of low-temperature thermal energy for the heat pump. If needed, the solar loop can also be connected directly to the heat pump’s primary circuit. Supply and return temperature sensors and flow meters allow the researchers to analyse system efficiency in different modes of operation.

This article was written by Eugene Gerden, a Moscow-based freelance journalist specialising in renewable energies.

This article is reproduced at www.solarthermalworld.org