Investigation of the Effect of Different Materials on Uniform Heat Distribution Over a Solar Collector Pipe

Abstract

Collector pipe used in solar power plant is a device for converting water from ambient temperature to the raised temperature which in turn used to rotate turbine blades. The raise in temperature is not that much when compared to thermal or nuclear power plant, so researches are going on for improving the heat carrying capacity of collector pipes. The productivity in pipe directly depends on the factors such as solar radiation incident on it, temperature distribution over the pipe, surrounding temperature, material of the pipeline used, and thickness of the pipe. When comparing to all of such parameters, the temperature distribution over the pipe is the main parameter which determines the performance of the collector pipe. For a particular type of solar collector pipe, the temperature distribution is function of length with day variation of solar incidence over it. In this work a collector pipe of length 2.2 m and 7 cm diameter is fabricated and tested under standard laboratory conditions for the uniform heat dissemination over the pipe. For keeping up the uniform temperature over the collector pipe, it is necessary to wound the pipe with metals like copper, aluminum. The results show that the heat distribution over the pipe is increased in case of copper when compared with aluminium.