Experimental Investigation of Multipurpose Solar Heating System
Publication: Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 141, Issue 3
Abstract
In order to increase the performance of solar collectors, multipurpose solar collectors were investigated experimentally by combining the solar water collector and solar air collector. In this design, the storage tank of the conventional solar water collector is modified as riser tubes and header, which is fitted in the bottom of the solar air heater. These were tested as a solar water heater and air heater simultaneously with both load and no load conditions. The results reveal that the maximum efficiency was 67.69% for the mass flow rate of in the multipurpose water heater. The maximum efficiency of multipurpose solar air heater was reached as 85.1% at 14:00 hour for the mass flow rate of at load condition. The maximum stagnation temperature of the multipurpose solar air heater was 88°C for the overall heat loss co-efficient of at no load condition. The heat removal factor based on the air inlet and outlet temperature, as well as the collector efficiency factor for different mass flow rates, were also determined. The results show that the efficiency of the multipurpose solar heating system increased with an increasing mass flow rate compared with the conventional one.
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Published In
Journal of Energy Engineering
Volume 141 • Issue 3 • September 2015
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 28, 2013
Accepted: Sep 25, 2013
Published online: Sep 27, 2013
Discussion open until: Jul 24, 2014
Published in print: Sep 1, 2015
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