Assessment of Medium Temperature Collectors for Process Heat

Medium temperature collectors will play an important role in the development of process heat applications. Nevertheless, the assessment and comparison of collectors based on different technologies is not yet straight forward from the information currently provided by most manufacturers. It is shown that it is not possible to draw conclusions about the thermal performance of a given collector based on its efficiency curve alone. Therefore a simulation program for three different collector technologies was carried out for 995 locations and weather conditions at 8 working temperature levels ranging from 100 °C to 310 °C. After an analysis of the different parameters affecting collector performance a novel contour chart format is presented.