Effect analysis on energetic, exergetic and financial performance of a flat plate collector with heat pipes

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to investigate comprehensively energy, exergy and financial parametric analyses of a solar flat plate collector (FPC) using heat pipes. A validated 1-D mathematical model was established and implemented in MATLAB to assess the collector performance. Hourly meteorological variables for one complete year in Fez (Morocco) were fitted and incorporated into the computation tool to describe accurately the thermal behavior of the whole collector. The combined effects of various climatic data, operating and design parameters were analyzed energetically and exergetically based on hourly and monthly performance indexes. Multi-objective optimization using a dimensionless-geometrical index was practiced to find out the best operating scenario achieving the highest energy and exergy outputs at a reduced cost. The best compromise between thermal/exergy performances was obtained at 986.93 W/m2 for the incident solar radiation, 12.18 °C for the ambient temperature and 1.50 m/s for the wind velocity. Also, it was found that the best combination of operating conditions is 45 °C inlet temperature and 0.036 kg/s mass flow rate. Fixing the number of heat pipes to 13 leads to an optimized collector design in terms of energetic, exergetic and financial performances. The obtained results confirm that an appropriate design of the collector should be undertaken carefully depending on the prevailing meteorological conditions to achieve optimum energetic/exergetic and economic performances.