Experimental investigation of thermal performance of an air solar collector with an absorber plate made of cans

ABSTRACTMaster ThesisEXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THERMAL PERFORMANCE OF ANAIR SOLAR COLLECTOR WITH AN ABSORBER PLATE MADE OF CANSFiliz ÖZGENFırat UniversityGraduate School of Natural and Applied SciencesDepartment of Mechanical Education2007,Page:59This study experimentally investigates a device for inserting an absorbing plate made of recyclablecans into the double-pass channel in a flat-plate solar air collector. This method substantially improvesthe collector efficiency by increasing the fluid velocity and enhancing of heat transfer coefficientbetween the absorber plate and air. Furthermore, this collector had been designed as a proposal to userecycle recyclable materials to build absorber plates of air solar collectors at an acceptable cost.The collector had been covered with a 4-mm single glass plate, in order to reduce convective losesto the atmosphere. Three different absorber plates had been designed and tested for experimentalstudy. In the first type (Type I), cans had been staggered as zigzag on absorber plate, while in Type IIthey were arranged in order. Type III is a flat plate (without cans). Experiments had been performedfor air mass flow rates of 0.03 kg/s and 0.05 kg/s. The highest efficiency had been obtained for Type I.Also, comparison between the thermal efficiency of the air solar collector tested in this study withthe ones reported in the literature had been presented, and a good agreement had been found.Keywords: Solar air heaters; recyclable cans; thermal efficiency; experimental; double-pass flow.