Effect of Dust Accumulation and Cleaning Process on Solar Reflectivity of some Building Materials

In countries that are suffering from hot weather, a considerable part of energy is dedicated for cooling the buildings due to the absorbed part of the incident short-wave which results in an increase of the surface temperature of the roof. To overcome this problem, a bright (white) surface can be used to reflect the solar radiation. On the other hand, the Photovoltaic (PV) panels are widely used to convert the sun light into electricity. However, the dust accumulation either on the reflective materials or on the PV panels will cause a substantial reduction on their performance. The present work is a dualutility because it studies both the effect of dust deposition on the reflectivity of some surfaces and as well the effect of the cleaning process. Keywords—dust, accumelation, reflectivity, cleaning process, PV, energy savings.