Efficiency improvement of flat plate solar collector using reflector

• Main Authors: Himangshu Bhowmik, Ruhul Amin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2017-11-01
• Series: Energy Reports
• Subjects: Solar energy; Solar water heating system; Flat plate collector; Reflector
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S235248471630097X

Solar collectors are the main components of a solar heating system. The collectors collect the sun’s energy, transform this radiation into heat, and then transfer this heat into a fluid, water or air, which has many household or industrial applications. This paper introduces a new technology to improve the performance of the solar thermal collectors. The solar reflector used here with the solar collector to increase the reflectivity of the collector. Thus, the reflector concentrates both direct and diffuse radiation of the sun toward the collector. To maximize the intensity of incident radiation, the reflector was allowed to change its angle with daytime. The radiations coming from the sun’s energy were converted into heat, and then this heat was transferred to the collector fluid, water. A prototype of a solar water heating system was constructed and obtained the improvement of the collector efficiency around 10% by using the reflector. Thus, the present solar water heating systems having the best thermal performance compared to the available systems.