Investigation of the heat transfer behaviour of a polymer solar collector for different manifold configurations

• A CFD model is used to investigate different collector manifold configurations.
• Gravity and buoyancy effects were taken into account in the CFD computations.
• Three cases with different inlet and outlet positions were examine.
• Proposed changes led to improvements of the collectors efficiency.

In order to further promote the utilization of solar thermal systems, solar collectors need to become more efficient and cost effective. This can be accomplished by a variety of methods, either by using lower cost materials, or/and by increasing their thermal efficiency by novel design. The current work presents such an effort dealing with the investigation of the heat transfer behaviour of a novel polymer solar collector for different manifold configurations with computational fluid dynamics (CFD).A CFD model that has previously been developed and validated is used to investigate different collector manifold configurations in order to optimize flow field development and to increase collector thermal efficiency.The investigation was carried-out for a wide range of inlet temperature conditions covering the expected operational range of the solar collector and the proposed collector's manifolds provided a considerable increase of the solar energy exploited by the collector without any increase in the manufacturing cost.