• Solar Energy
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.9-17
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• 1992

This is an experimental work concerning about an application of a heat pipe to an evacuated-glass-tube solar collector system. A methanol heat pipe with length of 0.7 m and diameter of 8 mm was manufactured and tested to compare its performance with that of freon thermosyphon which was originally used in a solar collector system fabricated at Thermomax Co.. Then this methanol heat pipe was utilized to be one component, i.e. heat transfer element, of the present experimental model of a solar collector. This model was performed the operation test as its absorber plate was irradiated by infrared lamps. The following results were obtained. (1) The methanol heat pipe was showed a stable operation when the variation of axial heat transport was $0{\sim}40$ watts and that of inclination angle was $30{\sim}90^{\circ}$. (2) The heat transport capability of the heat pipe was proved to be higher than that of the thermosyphon, because the heat transport limitation of the latter was occured at about 30 watt. (3) The heat pipe in a solar collector was also showed good performance as it transmitted absorbed energy.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.28-33
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• 2010

Solar collectors to be applied are mainly flat-plate or vacuum tube collector which is used for hot water supply of house because of low heat value and low temperature. There are a necessity to expand applicable scope of solar collector into the industrial process heat source and air conditioner for coping with renewable energy policy of government and industrial trend. This study is to analysis the performance of PTC solar collector of concentrating type and flat-plate of non-concentrating. For this, temperature difference and heating value as insolation of air outside is measured from these two collectors mounted on 2-axial solar tracking system. It is investigated that temperature profile obtained from PTC solar collector is uniform and collecting heat per unit area is 6.8kcal/$m^2$ min which is about 3 times with compare to flat-plate collector of 2kcal/$m^2$min. Also the amount of heat to be produced from PTC solar collector is 3 Mcal/$m^2$ which is about 2 times with compare to flat-plate collector of 1.5Mcal/$m^2$ as a result of operating these two collectors during one month. Therefore, it is obtained that heat collecting performance of PTC solar collector is superior to flat-plate.

• Proceedings of the SAREK Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.1215-1219
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• 2009

In this study, the performance of solar assisted hybrid heat pump system with cloud cover were analyzed by using experimental method in spring season. It was consisted of concentric evacuated tube solar collector, heat medium tank, heat storage tank, heat pump, and so on. As a result, the solar radiation should be maintained over $4.1\;MJ/m^2$ in order to operate solar heating system for heating. Solar heat of collector wasn't affected by ambient temperature, but cloud cover has a big effect to collector efficiency. In addition, the collector efficiency is about 50-60%, and solar fraction is 40% for this system.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.33 no.7
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• pp.994-1002
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• 2009

In this paper, effect of air gap thickness between absorber plate and glass cover on top heat loss of a closed loop oscillating heat pipe (CLOHP) solar collector was investigated. The CLOHP, which is made of copper with outer diameter of 3.2mm and inner diameter of 2.0mm, comprises 8 turns with heating, adiabatic and cooling section. The heating section of the heat pipe was attached to absorber plate which heated by solar simulator simulated by halogen lamps. The cooling section of the heat pipe was inserted into collector's cooling section that made of transparent acrylic. Temperatures of absorber plate, glass cover, and ambient air measured by K-type thermocouple and were recorded by MV2000-Yokogawa recorder. Top heat loss coefficients and top heat loss of the collector corresponding to some cases of air gap thickness were determined. The result of experiment shows the optimal air gap thickness for minimum top heat loss of this solar collector.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Industry Convergence
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• v.25 no.2_2
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• pp.271-278
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• 2022

The solar energy has been widely used to reduce the fossil fuel and prevent the environmental pollution. The renewable energy including solar heat tends to spread due to carbon neutrality for main country of the world. Targets of solar collector are usually acquisitions of hot water or hot air. Especially, air-heating collector using solar heat is known as the technology for obtaining hot air. This study aims to investigate of characteristics of thermal flow when the hot air by air-heating collector using solar heat flows inside of indoor space. The thermal flow of heating indoor space was simulated using ANSYS-CFX program and thus the behaviors of hot air in indoor space were evaluated with standard k-𝜀 turbulence model. As the results, as the inlet velocity was increased, the behaviors of hot air became simple, and temperature range of 25~75℃ had almost no effect on behavior of flow. As the inlet temperature was increased, the temperature curve of indoor space from bottom to top was changed from linear to quadratic. Furthermore, it was confirmed that inlet velocity as well as inlet temperature also should be considered to heat indoor space equally by air-heating collector using solar heat.

• Solar Energy
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.3-14
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• 1986

It is desirable to collect the solar thermal energy at relatively high temperature in order to minimize the size of thermal storage system and to enlarge the scope of solar thermal energy utilization. In this study, to develop a solar collector that has both advantages of collecting solar thermal energy at high temperature and fixing conveniently the collector system for long term period, a cylindrical parabolique concentrating solar collector (M.C.P.C.S.C) was designed, which has several rows of parabolique reflectors and thin thickness such as the flat-plate solar collector, maintaining the optical form of concentrating solar collector. The thermal performance of the M.C.P.C.S.C. newly designed in this study was analysed theoretically and experimentally. The results are summarized as follows: 1) prediction equation for outlet temperature, $T_o$, of heat transfer fluid and for the thermal efficiency, ${\eta}$, of the collector were derived as; o $$T_o=[C+B1_n(\frac{I_c(t)}{pv^3})]T_i$$ o $${\eta}=\frac{A}{A_c}\dot{m}[(C-1)+B1_n(E{\cdot}di^6\frac{I_c(t)}{\dot{m}^3})]\frac{T_i}{I_c(t)}$$ 2) When the insolation on the tilted solar collector surface, $I_c$, was $900-950W/m^2$ and the heat transfer fluid was not circulated in tubular absorber, the maximum temperature on the absorber surface was $100-118^{\circ}C$, this result suggested that the heat transfer fluid could be heated up to $98-116^{\circ}C$. The maximum temperature on the absorber surface was decreased with the increase of the collector shape factor, $L_p/L_w$ 3) There was a good agreement between the experimental and theoretical value of solar collector efficiency, ${\eta}$, which was proportional to the collector shape factor, $L_p/L_w$ 4) It is desirable to continue the study on the relationship between the collector shape factor, $L_p/L_w$, and the thermal efficiency of solar collector.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.28 no.2
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• pp.28-33
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• 2008

The purpose of this study was experimentally to investigate thermal performance of heat pipe for evacuated tubular solar collector. Two sets of evacuated tubular solar collector with different condenser shape of heat pipe were prepared. The experiments were performed under the same operating condition with an indoor testing apparatus. Also, the experiments were carried out various testing conditions including inclination, flow rate, and incident heat flux. The results of thermal performance of collector with enlarged condenser showed that $F_R({\tau}{\alpha})$ was 0.6572 and $F_RU_L$ was -2.0086 at $40^{\circ}$. And the results of thermal performance of collector with straight condenser showed that $F_R({\tau}{\alpha})$ was 0.6233 and $F_RU_L$ was -1.4996 at the same inclined angle.

• New & Renewable Energy
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.22-28
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• 2014

The thermoelectric generator using solar heat was applied to the device (heat-electricity conversion device) to produce small-scale electricity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the characteristics and performance of the device, which equipped with heat pipe as heat source. The experimental results showed that efficiency of circular single evacuated solar collector was higher 2.7 times than that of rectangular solar collector. Furthermore maximum power of 5 watt was obtained when 2 devices with series array were used and it could be more improved by increasing the number of device or measurement time.

• Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.149-154
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• 2007

It is essential to know the heat transfer characteristics at the absorber plate of Flat-plate solar collector for optimum design. For flat-plate solar collector, it is difficult to experimentally study the effect for the Reynolds number of riser considering low mass flow rate being applied into the collector with one riser tube. So, this study were performed to show the heat transfer characteristics of flat-plate solar collector with single absorber plate and riser for various Reynolds number at riser using commercial code FLUENT 6.0. The base collector size is chosen with $0.4m^2$ as 0.2m by 2m with single riser in this study, Reynolds number at riser is from 200 to 1200 including about 530 at typical flat-plate collector with 10 risers considering the mass flow rate of 0.02kg/s per collector area for the certificate test Through the simulation, the results were presented as the temperature distribution at the absorber plate for various flow rate and solar irradiance conditions, then showed the effective length scale of the absorber plate The real solar irradiation condition is assumed as the constant heat flux condition of $500w/m^2$ considering the annual average solar irradiance in Korea.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.1237-1245
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• 1993

In this study, a model of a flat plate solar collector using a heat pipe was manufactured and tested to investigate such operational characteristics of the present system of solar collector as start-up process, temperature distribution on the absorber plate and operation of the heat pipe. Moreover, collector efficiency was measured for 20-30 minutes of operation at various conditions of weather and the result was compared with that tested by Hill et. a. for a flat plate solar collector using direct circulation of coolant. Some results obtained in this study could be summarized as follows. (1) The required time for the initial start-up process was about 5-6 minutes, but the heat pipe began to operate as soon as the absorber plate was exposed to solar radiation. (2) On the absorber plate, the temperature distributions in axial direction maintained nearly constant, while temperature distributions in transversal direction showed smooth decrease with $3-5^{\cird}C$ along with solar radiation. (3) Thermal inertia of the collector system had a favorable effect to damp the turbulent variation of solar radiation. (4) The collector efficiency of the present system showed nearly the same tendency but a decrease of about 10% compared with that using direct circulation of coolant.