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Experimental Evaluation of a Flat Plate Solar Collector Under Hail City Climate

Article in Engineering, Technology and Applied Science Research · April 2018

DOI: 10.48084/etasr.1957

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 Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research Vol. 8, No. 2, 2018, 2750-2754 2750

Experimental Evaluation of a Flat Plate Solar

Collector Under Hail City Climate

Nidhal Ben Khedher

Mechanical Engineering Department
College of Engineering, Hail University
Hail, Saudi Arabia
N.khedher@uoh.edu.sa
Laboratoire d'Études des Systèmes Thermiques et Énergétiques
Ecole Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Monastir
University of Monastir
Monastir, Tunisia

Abstract—Flat plate solar water heaters are widely used for water to the working fluid for raising its temperature. The efficiency
heating in low-temperature residential applications. In this paper of flat plate solar collectors as a group of water heaters depends
the thermal performance of a solar flat plate water heater under on many factors such as climate conditions (especially solar
Hail weather conditions (latitude 27°52΄N longitude 41°69΄E) was radiation intensity), materials and design of collector as well as
experimentally investigated. Fluid was circulated through the the working fluid type and mass flux rate. Authors in [4]
imbedded copper tubes in the flat plate collector and inlet and reviewed applications of nanofluid in evacuated tube and flat
outlet temperatures of the fluid were noted at five minute plate solar collectors from efficiency, economic and
intervals. The experimental-time was between 9:00AM-15:00PM. environmental considerations and concluded that nanofluids
A study was carried out experimentally to present the efficiency
offer a better alternative to conventional fluid. Authors in [5]
curves of a flat plate solar collector at different flow rates.
ASHRAE standard 93-2003 was followed for calculation of
presented theoretically and experimentally the enhancement of
instantaneous efficiency of solar collector. Result shows that the heat transfer to the working fluid with a metal porous medium
flow rate of the circulating fluid highly influence the thermal placed inside pipes. The metallic mesh inserted in the collector,
efficiency of the solar collector. Optimum flow rate of 2.5L/min provided a higher water temperature compared to the
leads to maximum collector efficiency. conventional collector and it is the presence of the aluminum
mesh inside the channels that distributes heat more evenly.
Keywords-flat plate solar collector; low rate; thermal efficiency; Author in [6] investigated experimentally the design of flat-
ASHRAE standard 93-2003 plate solar collector system. In [7], authors presented an
experimental analysis and a thermal and hydrodynamic
I. INTRODUCTION modelling of a newly designed flat-plate solar collector
Solar energy is becoming an alternative for the limited characterized by its corrugated channel and by the high surface
fossil fuel resources. The recent increased interest in renewable area directly in contact with the heat transport fluid. Authors in
energy has created a need for research in the area of solar [8] studied the effect of nanofluids on the performance of solar
technology. One of the simplest and most direct applications of collector and solar water heater from efficiency, economy and
this energy is the conversion of solar radiation into heat. Solar environmental points of view. Authors in [2] reviewed
radiation can be widely used for water heating in hot water advancements made in the field of solar thermal technology
systems, as well as a supporting energy source for central with emphasis on techniques employed for performance
heating installations. The energy of the solar radiation is in this augmentation. For a sunny country like Saudi Arabia it is very
case converted to heat with the use of solar panels. Using the important to use the sun as main source of energy in many
sun's energy to heat water is not a new idea. More than one ways such as heating applications and generating electricity. In
hundred years ago, black painted water tanks were used as our study we will evaluate the thermal efficiency of a flat plate
simple solar water heaters in a number of countries. However, solar collector during winter season at four flow rates. The
the solar water heating technology has greatly improved during collector is working in closed loop where the water is stored in
the past century. Today there are more than 30 million square a tank and it is controlled to evaluate the stored heat.
meters of solar collectors installed around the globe. Most solar
water heating systems for buildings have two main parts: a II. EXPERIMENTATION AND METHODOLOGICAL APPROACH
solar collector and a storage tank. A flat plate solar collector [1- A. Experiments on Solar Collector
3] is the most popular solar energy based device which absorbs
The experiments on the flat plate solar collector were
the heat of sun rays through its body (usually with black color
carried out in Hail city (latitude 27°52’N longitude 41°69’E).
for maximum absorption) and then transfers the absorbed heat

www.etasr.com Ben Khedher: Experimental Evaluation of a Flat Plate Solar Collector Under Hail City Climate
 Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research Vol. 8, No. 2, 2018, 2750-2754 2751

The collector type is TE39 collector provided by TecQuipment. modern solar collector panel, it is two sheets of preformed
Figures 1 and 2 illustrate a schematic of the experimental set- stainless steel welded together to form integral parallel water
up, and a photograph of the flat plate solar collector, channels. An airtight box with a clear acrylic cover encloses
respectively. The collector specifications are given in Table I. the surface of the panel. A thick layer of insulating material on
The main part of the TE39 flat plate solar energy collector is a the back of the panel reduces heat loss to the rear.

Fig. 1. Schematic of the experimental set-up.

TABLE I. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP DESCRIPTION

Item Details
Single pass flat plate solar energy
Type
heat absorber
Maximum 1500mm Height x
Overall Size
2400mm Length x 110mm Depth
Collector
Cover Acrylic -1
Overall Dimensions 1.8m2
Effective Surface Area 1.6m2
Maximum Water Inlet
3bar
Pressure
Mains powered, centrifugal Energy
Pump Type
Input to Water 55W

In order to determine the performance of the prototype

under various conditions, the apparatus was equipped with the
necessary instrumentation. A schematic diagram of the
apparatus is shown in Figure 1, demonstrating the positioning Fig. 2. Picture of the set-up.
of the instrumentation within the prototype. An electrical pump
circulates the working fluid. A heat exchanger transfers heat In the current study, the instruction given in ASHRAE
energy from the solar collector to the tank which has a capacity standard 93-2003 [9] has been implemented to evaluate the
of 30L. A flow sensor measures the fluid flow rate. A simple thermal performance of the solar collector. The purpose of this
valve was installed to control the flow rate. A series of standard is to test the thermal performance of solar collectors
thermocouples type K were fitted on the collector (with that use single-phase fluids. The experiments were performed
accuracy of ±0.1°C), measuring the temperature of the working from 9AM to 3PM (local time) on several days in January
fluid in the collector at the inlet Ti and outlet To, the ambient 2018. The best data satisfying conditions of ASHRAE standard
temperature Ta and the stored water temperature Th. The solar have been taken. Experimental results are expressed in the form
radiation G was measured by a solar meter with accuracy of of graphs that indicate the collector efficiency against a
±2%. The solar collector was set to angle of inclination equal to reduced temperature parameter [(Ti–Ta)/G]. The efficiency of
that of Hail. solar collector was examined at various flow rates of 1.5, 2, 2.5

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 Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research Vol. 8, No. 2, 2018, 2750-2754 2752

and 3L/min. All the tested runs were collected using acquisition = − (3)
card system (Figure 3). Moreover, we designed the coil tank to
store the hot water and to evaluate the solar collector working Thus, the rate of useful energy extracted by the collector
in a closed loop (Figure 4). The coil heat exchanger is made (Qu), expressed as a rate of extraction under steady state
from copper. conditions, is proportional to the rate of useful energy absorbed
by the collector, minus the amount lost by the collector to its
surroundings. This is expressed as follows:
Qu  Qi  Q0  G A  U L (Tc  Ta ) (4)

It is also known that the rate of extraction of heat from the

collector may be measured by means of the amount of heat
carried away in the fluid passed through it, that is:
= − (5)
Equation (4) proves to be somewhat inconvenient because
of the difficulty in defining the collector average temperature.
Fig. 3. Data acquisition of the experimental setup. It is convenient to define a quantity that relates the actual useful
energy gain of a collector to the useful gain if the whole
collector surface were at the fluid inlet temperature. This
quantity is known as “the collector heat removal factor (FR)”
and is expressed as:

= (6)

The maximum possible useful energy gain in a solar

collector occurs when the whole collector is at the inlet fluid
temperature. The actual useful energy gain Qu, is found by
multiplying the collector heat removal factor FR by the
maximum possible useful energy gain. This allows the
rewriting of (4):
= − − (7)
Fig. 4. The designed coil tank. Equation (7) is a widely used relationship for measuring
collector energy gain and is generally known as the “Hottel-
B. Testing Method Whillier-Bliss equation”. The collector efficiency η is defined
Based on the ASHRAE standard 93-2003 [9], the thermal as the ratio of the useful energy gain Qu to the incident solar
performance of the solar collector is evaluated. If G is the energy over a particular time period:
intensity of solar radiation, in W/m2, incident on the aperture
plane of the solar collector having a collector surface area of The thermal performance of the solar collector is checked
Am2, then the amount of solar radiation received by the by determining the values of instantaneous efficiency for
collector is: different combinations of incident radiation, ambient
temperature, and inlet fluid temperature. The instantaneous
QiGA (1) efficiency is defined as the ratio of useful energy gain to the
solar energy received by absorber plate of the collector. The
However, a part of this radiation is reflected back to the
instantaneous thermal efficiency of the collector is:
sky, another component is absorbed by the glazing and the rest
is transmitted through the glazing and reaches the absorber = (8)
plate as short wave radiation. Therefore the conversion factor
indicates the percentage of the solar rays penetrating the η= (9)
transparent cover of the collector (transmission) and the
percentage being absorbed. Basically, it is the product of the
= − (10)
rate of transmission τ of the cover and the absorption rate α of
the absorber. Thus, If it is assumed that FR, τ, α, UL are constants for a given
QiGA (2) collector and flow rate, then the efficiency is a linear function
of the three parameters defining the operating condition: Solar
As the collector absorbs heat its temperature is getting irradiance (G), fluid inlet temperature (Ti) and ambient air
higher than that of the surrounding and heat is lost to the temperature (Ta). Thus, the performance of a flat-plate collector
atmosphere by convection and radiation. The rate of heat loss can be approximated by measuring these three parameters in
(Qo) depends on the collector overall heat transfer coefficient experiments.
(UL) and the collector temperature.

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 Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research Vol. 8, No. 2, 2018, 2750-2754 2753

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION interest is the intercept with the ΔT/G axis. This point of
Experiments were carried out at the roof top of mechanical operation can be reached when useful energy is no longer
engineering department of the college of engineering of Hail. removed from the collector, a condition that can happen if fluid
From Figure 5 it is not so easy to judge which flow rate flow through the collector stops (power failure). In this case,
ensuring the highest outlet temperature, because outlet the optical energy coming in must be equal to the heat loss,
temperature is highly influenced by the outdoor conditions requiring that the temperature of the absorber increase until this
(solar radiation, air temperature, wind speed). Moreover, a balance occurs. This maximum temperature difference or
solar collector working in a closed loop it is dependent to the “stagnation temperature” is defined by this point. For well-
initial hot water tank temperature. As shown in Figure 6 the insulated collectors the stagnation temperature can reach very
initial outlet temperatures (at 9:00AM) are different. For high levels causing fluid boiling.
example for the case of 1.5L/min flow rate the outlet
temperature starts from 34°C. However, it starts from 18°C for
the case of 2.5L/min. This behavior is justified by the
variability of weather conditions which leads to different initial
hot water tank temperatures. The temperature of the hot water
in the thermal storage tank depends on the effectiveness of the
heat exchanger and the temperature difference between the
outlet and inlet fluid. The flow rate equals to 2.5L/min
produced the highest storage tank temperature of 82.5°C as
shown in Figure 6. Figure 7 shows the variation of collector
efficiency versus the reduced temperature parameter for water
and different mass flux rates. The experimental data are fitted
with linear equations to obtain the characteristic parameters of
the collector and having better judgment about the effect of
flow rate on the thermal efficiency. As it can be seen, at a given
value of reduced temperature parameter, with increasing flow Fig. 5. Outlet Temperature at different flow rates.
rate, the efficiency increases till reaching an optimum value
corresponding to the Flow rate 2.5L/min. Based on (5) and (6),
the useful heat energy rate increases with an increase in mass
flux, on the other hand, useful heat energy rate is directly
proportional to efficiency. Therefore, the efficiency increases
with increasing mass flux. With increasing Vol. flow rate from
1.5L/min to 2.5L/min the maximum enhancement in efficiency
was found to be about 15%.
Table II provides more details regarding Figure 5 and the
solar collector performance when the working fluid is water.
This table shows the values of the removed energy parameter
FRUL and the absorbed energy parameter FR (τα) for the four
flow rates (1.5L/min, 2L/min, 2.5L/min, 3L/min). It is seen that
both removed energy and absorbed energy parameters have an Fig. 6. Hot stored water at different flow rates.
optimum value corresponding to Vol. flow rate of 2.5L/min.
The collector efficiency η is plotted against (Ti–Ta )/G. The
slope of this line (-FR UL) represents the rate of heat loss from
the collector. For example, collectors with cover sheets will
have less of a slope than those without cover sheets.

TABLE II. VALUES OF F U AND F ( ) FOR DIFFERENT FLOW RATES

Vol. Flow rate (L/min) ( ) ‒
1.5 0.779228 -7.7476
2 0.666701 -3.2787
2.5 0.952 -13.6875
3 0.921 -12.2477

There are two interesting operating points on Figure 7. The

first is the maximum collection efficiency, called the optical
efficiency. This occurs when the fluid inlet temperature equals
ambient temperature (Ti=Ta). For this condition, the ΔT/G
value is zero and the intercept is FR(τ α). The other point of
Fig. 7. Solar collector efficiency curve at four flow rates for water.

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 Engineering, Technology & Applied Science Research Vol. 8, No. 2, 2018, 2750-2754 2754

From the optimum flow rate (2.5L/min) corresponding to [7] A. Alvarez, O. Cabeza, M. C. Muniz, L. M. Varela, “Experimental and
the highest efficiency we presented in Figure 8 the solar numerical investigation of a flat-plate solar collector”, Energy, Vol. 35,
No. 9, pp. 3707-3716, 2010
radiation, ambient temperature, hot water temperature, the inlet
[8] O. Mahian, A. Kianifar, S. A. Kalogirou, I. Pop, S. Wongwises, “A
and the outlet temperatures. From this figure we can notice that review of the applications of nanofluids in solar energy”, International
the stagnation of outlet and hot water temperatures is reached at Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer, Vol. 57, No. 2, pp. 582–94, 2013
1:30 PM. [9] American Society of Heating, Refrigerating & Air Conditioning
Engineers, Standard 93-2003, Methods of testing to determine the
thermal performance of solar collectors, ASHRAE, 2003

Fig. 8. Hot Solar intensity and various temperatures of solar collector at

flow rate 2.5L/min.

IV. CONCLUSION
ASHRAE standard 93-2003 was detailed, then followed for
calculation of the efficiency of a flat plate solar collector. A
more precise and detailed analysis should include the fact, that
the overall heat loss coefficient (UL) and other factors as the
heat removal factor (FR) are not constant values and they are
tightly dependent on fluid flow rate. The present experiment
focused on a comparative analysis of a four different flow rates
(1.5 L/min, 2L/min, 2.5L/min, 3L/min) and their effect on the
performance of flat plate solar collector. The experiment
findings established that maximum efficiency, when reduced
temperature parameter [(Ti–Ta)/G] equals to zero, was 95% for
flow rate 2.5L/min.
REFERENCES
[1] Y. Tian, C. Y. Zhao, “A review of solar collectors and thermal energy
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[2] S. Suman, M. K. Khan, M. Pathak, “Performance enhancement of solar
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[3] X. Xu, Y. Lei, Z. Xiaosong, P. Donggen, “Review on the Development
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[4] M. J. Muhammad, I. A. Muhammad, N. A. Che Sidik, M. N. A. W.
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