Design, installation and operation of a solar thermal public bath in eastern Iran

An indirect forced circulation solar water heating system using a flat-plate collector is modeled for domestic hot water requirements for the people living in Hadji-abad village. This project is designed using F-chart. The water heating load or the amount of energy required to warm water from the inlet cold water to a desired temperature, is dependent on several factors such as hot water consumption rate, cold water inlet and desired hot water set temperatures, location and orientation of the building. The system was installed to supply hot water for 12 showers and 4 private baths for a public bath complex to serve the hot water demands throughout the year for 150 people per day. The system was built in 2004 in the village of Hadji-abad near the city of Birjand in the eastern part of Iran. The installation is composed of two solar collector fields (195 m2) and two storage tanks (of 3 m3 capacity each). This paper emphasizes the factors associated with subsystems that are required to extract heat from 195 m2 solar collectors, store this heat in two thermally insulated hot water storage tanks and the heat distribution system with electrically operated pumps for water circulation. The results show that by utilizing solar energy, the designed system could provide the total hot water demands.