STUDY THE EFFECT OF THE ENVIRONMENTAL PARAMETERS ON THE PERFORMANCE OF A PROTOTYPE FOR ASPHALT SOLAR COLLECTOR USING AIR AS A WORKING FLUID

Abstract

Diminution of fossil fuel inspires researches to look for renewable energy sources. Heat island and road accidents resulted from tires explosion due to excessive asphalt heat (reach to 70 oC) were another problems. These problems oriented researchers to use asphalt as a heat collector. They found by using asphalt as a heat collector it will gain energy, reduce heat island and reduce road accidents as well. Recently researchers started to use some applications of asphalt solar collector (ASC). Majority of these applications used to heat and cool water. In this research, the first ASC prototype was built outside the laboratory and using atmospheric air as a working fluid. The environmental parameters such as ambient temperature, variation of solar day time, asphalt surface temperature is considered. This prototype consisted of buried pipes under asphalt layers with two opening ends. One end is connected to atmospheric air duct and the other ends connected to Unplasticized Poly Vinyl Chloride (UPVC) chimney. It has been found compatibility with the laboratory study in the strong effect of the chimney height on the air flow velocity through the ASC. Also it can be concluded that the ASC prototype performance for producing energy depends on prototype components in terms of chimney height, asphalt temperature and the environmental / atmospheric conditions in terms of ambient air temperature, and ambient wind speed. Key words: Asphalt collector, solar energy, energy harvesting, and air velocity.