Optimization of the design of a polymer flat plate solar collector

Abstract

International audienceThis work presents numerical simulations aimed at optimizing the design of polymer flat plate solar collectors. Solar collectors' absorbers are usually made of copper or aluminum and, although they offer good performance, they are consequently expensive. In comparison, using polymer can improve solar collectors economic competitiveness. In this paper, we propose a numerical study of a new design for a solar collector to assess the influence of the design parameters (air gap thickness, collector's length) and of the operating conditions (mass flow rate, incident solar radiation, inlet temperature) on efficiency. This work outlines the main trends concerning the leading parameters impacting the polymer flat plate solar collector's efficiency. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Design, analysis and performance of a polymer–carbon nanotubes based economic solar collector

“…It was attributed to the increased average temperature of the collector, resulting in the larger heat losses. These trends are consistent with the polymer solar collector analysis of Mintsa Do Ango et al (2013). …”

“…The surrounding temperature (T surr ) for the radiation and the ambient temperature (T a ) for the convection were assumed to be identical due to the indoor test environment with sufficient stabilization time. The temperature rise of the glazing under the stationary conditions is less than 5 °C (Mintsa Do Ango et al, 2013). By ignoring the wind chill effect because of no forced flows in the tests, the natural convection loss from the glazing cover is not significant.…”

“…Simple plastic film integral collector storage systems have been proposed as low cost solar water heaters (Tsilingiris, 1997). Design optimizations and the effects of the design parameters, such as the insulation thickness, the flow rate, the fluid layer thickness, the air gap thickness, the collector's length and the manifold configurations, on the performance of polymer solar collectors were investigated theoretically and numerically (Cristofari et al, 2002;Mintsa Do Ango et al, 2013;Missirlis et al, 2014). The optimum values of these parameters were proposed and the possibilities of the polymer application in the collector construction were shown.…”

Distributed mathematical model supporting design and construction of solar collectors for drying

“…The nonselective absorber surface exhibited more thermal radiation emission than convective loss, thus making the radiative loss component dominant (Mintsa Do Ango et al [31] and Gao et al [15] ). Bhagoria et al [32] and Gao et al [15] propose the use of rough surfaces to improve the convective heat transfer coefficient.…”

Numerical Investigations of Heat Transfer Performance of Nanofluids in a Flat Plate Solar Collector

“…Many experimental and numerical studies were performed to investigate on the flat plat solar collectors [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18], but heat transfer of nanofluids in the flat plate solar collectors is limited to a few published studies [19][20][21][22][23].…”