Experimental and CFD Optimization on Flow and Heat Transfer to a Solar Flat-Plate Glass Collector
Abstract
In the project solar flat-plate glass collector, a new type of solar collector will be developed which, simplified, consists of four glass plates. As part of the project, the full volumetric flow in the fluid layer and the convective heat transfer in the insulating gas layer were investigated by using experimentally and numerically methods. Regarding to the fluid layer, an optimal fluid layer structure has been found which distributes the fluid well and ensures an optimal collector efficiency factor of nearly 99%. With the numerical simulation of the convective flow in the isolation gas layer it was shown, that the most used equation by Hollands (1976) presumably needs to be extended by the aspect ratio of the gas volume and other boundary conditions. These results are currently being validated experimentally. In addition, the filling/drainback process was examined for a potential drainback application.