PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF SOLAR WATER HEATER INTEGRATED WITH SODIUM ACETATE TRIHYDRATE AS PHASE CHANGE MATERIAL

Abstract

The Solar Water Heater (SWH) has an important place among solar heating collectors due to the fact that construction of the water heater requires less material than others. The Solar water heater may be used for space heating and drying. The main objectives of this paper are to increase the efficiency of flat plate collector solar water heater. The efficiency of Solar Water Heater is increased with decreasing, the thermal losses. To overcome the high thermal losses due to conduction, convection and radiation in the flat plate collector, PCM materials are used. To improve the efficiency of the flat plate collector, it is integrated with the Sodium Acetate Trihydrate as PCM. To enhance the heating rate of the solar water heater, the PCM is integrated and stored directly in flat plate collector. The performance of the flat plate collector is measured with and without using PCM. The Experimental result were taken for the area of 0.42 m2. The efficiency of the flat plate collector is increased up to 5 to 7% while compared to with and without using PCM