Experimental Evaluation of a Latent Heat Thermal Storage Unit Integrated Into a Flat Plate Solar Collector as Temperature Stabilizer

In this paper, temperature stabilization effect provided by PCM containers integrated into a flat plate solar collector during its daytime operation is experimentally analyzed. For this purpose, it was designed and constructed experimental set up with a prototype of flat plate solar collector with phase change material containers located under the absorber plate. Experimental tests were performed under outdoor conditions with and without phase change material, from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm. Temperatures of the ambient, absorber plate, water outlet, water inlet and PCM are compared with the behavior of solar radiation for 3 different cases. It was observed that using PCM reduce the fluctuation in water outlet temperature and absorber plate temperature due to solar radiation reduction, in fact, temperature variations were 55 % and 49.8 % lower compared with test without PCM, respectively. In order to compare results under different solar radiation conditions with and without PCM, conclusions were obtained by comparing these temperatures in proportion to the reduction of solar radiation.