Flat Plate Based- Solar System With a Tracking System

  Water heating in Libyan domestic sector represents over 29% of the total electrical consumption. There is a great potential of hot water usage in the industrial and other sectors. Solar energy can play vital role in providing hot water to the residential and industrial sectors. In this paper, numerical simulation and experimental investigation are undertaken to study the enhancement of thermosyphon solar water heater with flat plate collector system through design, manufacturing and implementation of a single axis tracking. The collector tracks the sun in a band angle equal to 70° from east to west with surface tilted angle of 45° from the horizontal. The design and manufacturing processes of the tracking system and assembling to the thermosyphon systems are presented. Numerical simulations are carried out using TRNSYS software where several cases of one axis and two axis tracking systems are simulated and presented in this paper. TRNSYS simulation results indicate that 38% extra energy can be harnessed in case of single-axis tracking system over stationary one. Experimental testing of designed tracking system are performed along with stationary identical system for several months, substantial amount of data are. The results show that the performance is enhanced by an average value of 21.17% over stationary one. This result is considered to be very reasonable compared with the theoretical one. The additional cost incurred due to the inclusion of the tracking system is estimated to be 20.4%.