Abstract
Solar Air Systems (SAS) have unique advantages for space heating and tempering ventilation air. Air, unlike water, needs no protection against freezing nor are leaks damaging to the building structure or its contents. In contrast to glazed collector, unglazed steel solar collector may have higher efficiencies over glazed flat collector due to the absence of the glass. Therefore, the monitoring of SAS is so important to evaluate actual performance of SAS for right applications. This study is to provide a testing method with a movable test cell developed in KIER to evaluate the thermal performance of SAS based on international standard method ASHRAE 93-86, "Method of Testing to Determine the Thermal Performance of Solar Collectors". The monitoring tool used advanced technique LabVIEW 6i with portable notebook computer. Sample results have been obtained to access the performance of a reference and a target SAS module. The process and tool introduced here could be used to provide a performance verification data for future implementation study applications.
