Experimental Investigation of Pre-Heating Double Pass Flow Arrangement on Thermal Performance Enhancement of Evacuated Glass-Thermal Absorber Tube Collector (EGATC) for Air Heating Application

Abstract

Thermal energy storage (TES) in solar thermal application assist in increasing the performance and efficiency of the solar thermal collector system. Various technique has been developed to enhance TES performance, such as using water and PCM as energy storage material. The type of material selection and design arrangement also contributes to the performance of solar thermal collector systems. This research aims to enhance the thermal performance of the outlet temperature of an Evacuated Glass-Thermal Absorber Tube Collector (EGATC) for air heating applications. The performance study has been conducted to measure the outlet temperature per indoor setup under the artificial solar radiation on the parameter effect of double pass flow arrangement with pre-heating inner absorber parameter. The comparison experiment at wind speed 0.9 m/s for stainless steel inner absorber showed better results on temperature outlet 47.7°C, energy store 4.46KJ and efficiency (collector + storage) 37.5% compared with insulation materials internal absorber with temperature outlet 44.7°C, energy store 4.40KJ and efficiency (collector + storage) 31.1%, respectively. This concluded that EGATC performance can be increased with those respective parameters.