A New Approach to Analyze the Performance of Flat Plate Collector

Abstract

Abstract

As per standards, the thermal efficiency test for the flat plate collector is used to be conducted under specified steady state conditions and then incident angle modifier ‘Kτα’ has been used to calculate the thermal efficiency at a different angle of incidence. These standards do not consider the effect of solar azimuth angle, as well as time consumption and require the costly test setup. In this paper, a new approach has been used which is very simple and validated through experiments and coined a new term called transmittance factor ‘Fτ’. Transmittance factor ‘Fτ’ was obtained by using glazing only, unlike the complete test setup used in incident angle modifier. ‘Fτ’ was measured at a different surface angle and different times of the day assimilate the effect of solar azimuth angle. The values of ‘Fτ’ were found to be leveled up with ‘Kτα’. Transmittance factor ‘Fτ’ can be used to predict the thermal efficiency of the collector for any time of the day or can be correlated with other latitude using linear equation obtained by standard thermal efficiency test procedure.

Keywords: Angle of incidence, efficiency, flat plate collector, incident angle modifier, sun azimuth angle, transmittance

Cite this Article

Harsh Kadyan, Anil K. Berwal, R S. Mishra. A New Approach to Analyze the Performance of Flat Plate Collector. Journal of Alternate Energy Sources and Technologies. 2018; 9(2): 39–49p.