Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
4991407 | Applied Thermal Engineering | 2017 | 12 Pages |
Abstract
Flat-plate solar collector is vulnerable to the freezing-damage. But the study of the antifreeze performance of the flat-plate solar collector is rarely reported in the published literatures. This paper presents a model with high precision to simulate the cooling and freezing process of flat-plate solar collector exposed to cold ambient air and conducts a prototype experiment to validate the model. Based on the validated model, factors influencing the antifreeze performance of flat-plate solar collector are investigated. Besides, the antifreeze effect of introducing TIM transparent honeycomb (TIM: transparent insulation materials) in the flat-plate collector is studied numerically. Results show that narrowing the pipe space, increasing the pipe diameter or header diameter and reducing the emissivity of absorber and glass-cover are the effective ways of enhancing the antifreeze performance of flat-plate collector. Meanwhile, employing TIM transparent honeycomb can significantly improve the antifreeze performance of flat-plate collector and can put off the completely frozen time of the collector by 2.5Â h.
Keywords
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering
Chemical Engineering
Fluid Flow and Transfer Processes
Authors
Fan Zhou, Jie Ji, Jingyong Cai, Bendong Yu,