CFD Simulation On Flat Plate Solar Collector With Novel Heat Collecting Components

Currently, renewable energy has attracted more and more attentions and researchapplications. Solar energy, one of the renewable energy, owns more huge advantages thanother renewable energy. It has formed the broad research prospects and market prospects. Inthis paper, the importance of the solar thermal applications is describes and the species ofsolar collector is introduced. However, the advantages and research progress of the heat pipeflat plate solar collector are got more focus on. Based on the former investigations, a novelheat pipe heat collecting plate is designed, and numerical simulation on this new flat platesolar collector is carried out.1. Based on the characteristics and requirements of the heat pipe flat plate solar collector,a novel heat pipe flat plate solar collector is designed. The upper surface is corrugated, andthe downward surface is plat. The heat pipe arrangement is existed between those twosurfaces. The plate has95mm width,1000mm long,5mm high.2.3D simulation on this novel heat pipe flat plate solar collector is carried out. Fluentsoftware is used to analysis the influence of tilt, inlet mass flow rate and air gap on thecollection efficiency. In Guangzhou, the optimum tilt angle of solar collectors is10°for4-9months, and the optimal tilt angle30°to35°for the rest months. The best inlet water massflow is0.15Kg/s, and the optimum air gap is20mm.3. There are two methods to improve this solar collector collection efficiency throughanalyzing the energy balance of this solar collector, to improve the heat exchanger and the airgap respectively. The heat exchanger with internal thread structure replaces the original heatexchanger. Simulation results shows that the best water mass flow rate is0.1Kg/s. Theefficiency decreases when the pitch decreasing. Compare with the plain tube structure heatexchanger, the maximum instantaneous efficiency of the solar collector with internal threadstructure heat exchanger improves by3.37%, the total heat loss coefficient decreases by23.26%.4. This paper investigates the solar collector collection efficiency with vacuum gap. Theresults show that the best water mass flow rate is0.1Kg/s. And the vacuum gap distance has little effect on the collection efficiency of this solar collector. Compare with the air gap, themaximum instantaneous efficiency of the solar collector with vacuum gap improves by2.70%,the total heat loss coefficient decreases by64.96%.