Experimental, numerical and analytical investigation of a U-type evacuated tube collectors' array

Dimitrios N. Korres, Christos Tzivanidis, Irene P. Koronaki and Michael T. Nitsas

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 135, issue C, 218-231

Abstract: In this study an array of four commercial U-type evacuated tube collectors with mini-CPC reflectors was analyzed both experimentally and numerically. The operation of the array was examined in a range of 35–80 °C inlet temperature in Athens/Greece from 11:00 to 16:30 local hour at 2nd May using water as working medium. The data acquisition regarding the solar irradiation intensity, the inlet, the outlet and the ambient temperature was conducted every 10 min Α time-dependent computational fluid dynamic model was developed in Solidworks for validating the results while an analytical solution was, also, proposed. It was found that the simulation and the analytical results diverge 3.7% and 9.3% on average from the experimental regarding the thermal efficiency of the array while the mean divergence between them was 6.1%. The specific simulation gave us the opportunity to predict the receiver temperature as well as the thermal efficiency of each module something that the experimental process could not provide. The receiver temperature was also predicted through the analytical solution for further validation. The experiments were conducted in the National Technical University of Athens at the Applied Thermodynamics laboratory of Mechanical Engineering Department while the design of the simulated model was conducted in Solidworks.

Keywords: Experimental analysis; CFD analysis; Analytical solution; Validation; Flow simulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148118314356
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:135:y:2019:i:c:p:218-231

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2018.12.003

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).