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Performance and operational effectiveness of evacuated flat plate solar collectors compared with conventional thermal, PVT and PV panels

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journal contribution
posted on 2018-01-23, 11:04 authored by Roger Moss, Paul Henshall, Farid Arya, Stan Shire, Trevor Hyde, Philip EamesPhilip Eames
The concept of an evacuated flat plate (EFP) collector was proposed over 40 years ago but, despite its professed advantages, very few manufacturers have developed commercial versions. This situation suggests both technical difficulties in manufacturing a competitively-priced sealed for life panel and a lack of awareness of the benefits of such panels. This paper demonstrates an evacuated flat plate simulation that closely models experimental efficiency measurements. Having established the validity of the model, it compares published data for a commercial EFP collector with predictions for an optimal design to investigate whether any further efficiency improvement might be possible. The optimised design is then evaluated against alternative solar energy devices by modelling a number of possible applications. These comparisons should inform choices about solar options for delivering heat: EFP collectors are well-suited to some of these applications. An evacuated flat plate solar thermal collector with a 0.5x0.5 m absorber was tested under a solar simulator. The test conditions spanned the range 200

Funding

The authors are grateful to the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for funding this work as part of a collaborative programme between Warwick, Loughborough and Ulster universities, reference EP/K009915/1, EP/K010107/1 and EP/K009230/1.

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

Applied Energy

Volume

216

Pages

588 - 601

Citation

MOSS, R. ...et al., 2018. Performance and operational effectiveness of evacuated flat plate solar collectors compared with conventional thermal, PVT and PV panels. Applied Energy, 216, pp.588-601.

Publisher

Elsevier © The Author(s)

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Acceptance date

2018-01-01

Publication date

2018-02-23

Notes

This is an Open Access Article. It is published by Elsevier under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

ISSN

0306-2619

Language

  • en