An experimental investigation of a two-dimensional prototype of a transparent transpired collector

This paper presents an experimental investigation of the thermal performance of a two-dimensional reduced scale prototype designed to simulate the essential features of a novel type of solar air collector involving a transparent transpired cover. Another objective is to analyze the effects of varying key parameters such as plenum thicknesses, pitch spacing, slots width, irradiation, and air mass flow rate in term of collector efficiency. A multi-level factorial design of experiments is used for this investigation. It is found that the air mass flow rate has the strongest effect on the efficiency of the transparent transpired collector. The irradiation, slots width, pitch spacing and plenum thicknesses seems to have a moderate effect.