A Comparative Study on Thermal Performance of Solar Flat Plate and Evacuated Tube Collectors

Abstract

Solar power harvesting is an important field of research around the globe due to the inadequacy of the natural resources like oil, gases and other fuels. Designing a solar water heater that could absorb more thermal energy with high efficiency is a challenging task of the researchers. It is important to consider the efficiency of the collector, and how well it transfers heat into working fluid. The overall performance of any solar collector and the amount of energy and the money spent is dependent on the performance of the collector right throughout the year. In this research work, an attempt has been made to investigate the thermal performance of two different water heaters, a flat plate collector and an evacuated tube collector. Experiments were conducted on the designed, two different solar water heaters such as flat plate collector and evacuated tube. The inlet and outlet temperatures of the water were measured for various experimental parameter such as mass flow rate of water and tilt angle. The solar irradiation was recorded through pyranometer, a solar radiation measuring device during experiment. Evacuated tubes made from borosilicate were used in this research work. From the analysis of the results it is found that the thermal conversion efficiency of evacuated tube is 41.3% than the flat plate collector tested in earlier work of the investigator. Numerical simulations were also conducted and the results obtained were found to be well matched with the experimental results.