Experimental Study of a Single-pass Flat Plate Solar air Collector with Severe Dust Deposition on the Transparent Glass Cover

The present study analyzes the thermal performance of a single-pass flat plate solar air collector (SAC) in the case of severe dust deposition surface. Experiments of the SAC with both severe dust deposition surface and clean cover surface are conducted using the steady-state test (SST) method, in order to show a contrast. The mathematical relation between the combined standard uncertainty of the predicted thermal efficiency and the uncertainties of the experimental results is presented. And the collector characteristic parameters, such as the collector heat removal factor, the collector flow efficiency factor, the total heat loss coefficients, etc. are obtained. The results show that, the predicted thermal efficiency in the case of severe dust deposition surface is decreased by 10.7% - 21.0% when the normalized temperature difference ranges from 0 to 0.04. And the optical efficiency of the SAC with severe dust deposition surface is decreased by 8.39% in contrast with the case of clean cover surface.