The impact of optical and thermal properties on the performance of flat plate solar collectors

B Hellstrom, M Adsten, P Nostell, B Karlsson and E Wackelgard

Renewable Energy, 2003, vol. 28, issue 3, 331-344

Abstract: The impact of the optical properties on the annual performance of flat plate collectors in a Swedish climate has been estimated with the MINSUN program. The collector parameters were determined with a theoretically based calculation program verified from laboratory measurements. The importance of changes in solar absorptance and thermal emittance of the absorber, the addition of a teflon film or a teflon honeycomb, antireflection treatment of the cover glazing and combinations of these improvements were investigated. The results show that several improvements can be achieved for solar thermal absorbers. A combined increase in absorptance from 0.95 to 0.97 and a decrease in emittance from 0.10 to 0.05 increase the annual performance with 6.7% at 50 °C operating temperature. The increase in performance by installing a teflon film as second glazing was estimated to 5.6% at 50 °C. If instead a teflon honeycomb is installed, a twice as high performance increase is obtained, 12.1%. Antireflection treatment of the cover glazing increases the annual output with 6.5% at 50 °C. A combination of absorber improvements together with a teflon honeycomb and an antireflection treated glazing results in a total increase of 24.6% at 50 °C. Including external booster reflectors increases the expected annual output at 50 °C to 19.9–29.4% depending on reflector material.

Keywords: Solar thermal collector; Materials; Teflon; Antireflection treatment; Solar absorber; Booster reflector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096014810200040X
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:28:y:2003:i:3:p:331-344

DOI: 10.1016/S0960-1481(02)00040-X

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 ().