Abstract
The performance of a flat plate solar collector combining a selective surface on the absorber plate and a plastic honeycomb in the air gap is not as high as might be expected because of a certain coupling between the radiative and (gaseous) conduction heat transfer modes. To decouple the modes and achieve the desired low heat loss coefficient, this paper suggests leaving an air gap of about 10 mm between the plate and the honeycomb—the air gap and the honeycomb together comprising a compound honeycomb air layer. The paper evaluates the suggestion through three basic studies. The first two experimentally and theoretically studied the heat transfer in the case where the air is artificially maintained stationary, and the third experimentally studied the effect of free convective air motion on this heat transfer. These studies demonstrated that leaving the air gap effectively decouples the modes but does not significantly alter the free convection at the design condition. It is concluded that the compound honeycomb collector should have very good performance at high temperature.
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