Performance analysis and experimental validation of a vee‐corrugated absorber integrated collector storage solar water heater

Abstract

AbstractThis paper focuses on enhancing the energy collection efficiency of an integrated collector storage solar water heater (ICS SWH) by vee‐corrugating the absorber and optimizing the design for the vee‐included angle through simulation and experimental study. This paper presents an efficient algorithm for analyzing a vee‐corrugated absorber ICS SWH using Engineering Equation Solver Software. For validating this algorithm, two models of ICS SWH systems have been fabricated: one with a flat absorber and the other with a 60° vee‐included angle corrugated absorber with eight corrugations. The basic purpose of the fabrication of the flat absorber ICS SWH system was to approximate the absorptivity of the absorber. A typical value of 0.68 was estimated for the absorptivity of the aluminum absorber coated with nonselective black paint. After the experimental investigation of the 60° vee‐included angle ICS SWH system, it was found that the real‐time readings were in close agreement with the numerical model readings. For comparison with the previous work, a five‐corrugation system with an approximate 90° vee‐included angle with the same projected dimensions was modeled and the efficiencies of both the models for the time from 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. were calculated. The efficiency of the eight‐corrugation model was 42.56%, which was better than the previous work of the five‐corrugation model, with a 38.86% efficiency for the same ambient conditions. Also, it was theoretically deduced that we had an optimized system at 18 corrugations and a vee‐included angle of 28.78°.