1 research outputs found
Characterization and energy performance of a slurry PCM-based solar thermal collector: a numerical analysis
Flat plate solar thermal collector is the most common technology for solar energy conversion at the building scale.
This technology has been established since long time and continuous developments have been achieved as time
passed by; significant improvements of flat plate solar thermal collectors are thus now limited.
A novel approach to increase further the performance of this technology is based on the exploitation of the latent
heat of the heat carrier fluid. In order to assess this strategy, a previously developed numerical model of flat plate
solar thermal collector with slurry PCM as heat carrier is herewith used to simulate the technology. The
characterization and energy performance of such a system are herewith presented, based on the outcome of the
numerical analysis. The results demonstrate that the novel approach is able to improve the performance of the
system under different boundary conditions and in different climates: the improvement in the instantaneous
efficiency is in the range 5-10%, while during the winter season the converted heat by the slurry PCM-based system
is 20-40% higher than that of a conventional water based solar collector, depending on the climates – the colder the
climate, the larger the improvement