Experimental Investigation of Evacuated Tube Solar Collector with Annular Heat Exchanger

Abstract

Now-a-days evacuated tubes solar water heaters are increasingly use in South India because of good thermal efficiency and high water temperature could be achievable as compared to flat plate solar collectors. Low manufacturing and maintenance cost also attract people to go for evacuated tube solar water heaters. This paper reports experimental results of two types of evacuated tube solar water heaters. To evaluate the performance of evacuated tube solar water heater, single-phase forced system and two-phase closed forced systems were considered. In two-phase closed system sunflower oil was used as working fluid to heat water. Throughout the study two-phase closed system shows better performance compared to single-phase open collector system and their efficiency almost 10 to 12% higher. But, because of high initial cost of two-phase system, the pay back periods of both collector systems is almost same. In two phased closed system higher temperature of water could be achieved, which is very useful to operate advanced system.