Simple Empirical Relation for an Evacuated-Tube Solar Collector Performance Prediction from Solar Intensity

Nattapat Pongboriboon, Wei Wu (), Walairat Chandra-ambhorn (), Patthranit Wongpromrat and Eakarach Bumrungthaichaichan
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Nattapat Pongboriboon: Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520, Thailand
Wei Wu: Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan
Walairat Chandra-ambhorn: Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520, Thailand
Patthranit Wongpromrat: Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520, Thailand
Eakarach Bumrungthaichaichan: Department of Chemical Engineering, School of Engineering, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok 10520, Thailand

Energies, 2023, vol. 16, issue 17, 1-19

Abstract: In this paper, the effect of solar intensity on the heat pipe tip temperature in a heat pipe type—evacuated-tube solar collector (HP-ETSC) was investigated. A simple relation was proposed, relating the solar intensity to the heat pipe tip temperature generated from the experimental data. This simple empirical relation was applied in a set of heat transfer equations derived to predict the heating medium temperature at the manifold outlet of the evacuated-tube solar collector. The calculated results corresponding to two types of heating medium, i.e., palm oil and water, were compared with experimental results from the literature. The results show that the average error was 6.41% for the case of palm oil and 4.66% for the case of water. Based on the case of water as a heating medium fluid, it was found that the flow rate of the heating medium fluid affected the accuracy of prediction, as the percentage error increased with the heating medium flow rate. The maximum percentage error increased from only 1.83% for a water inlet flowing at a Reynolds number of about 2.4 × 10 3 to 15.23% for a water flow rate at a Reynolds number of about 2.6 × 10 4 . The correction factor was added into the correlation to predict the heat transfer coefficients of heating medium fluids. With this correction factor, the maximum error could be reduced from 11.78% to 7.29% for the palm oil case and from 15.23% to 5.57% for the water case. The average errors corresponding to palm oil and water cases could be reduced to 0.74% and 1.26%, respectively.

Keywords: evacuated-tube solar collector; solar intensity; empirical relation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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