Comparison Study of Solar Flat Plate Collector with Two Different Absorber Materials

The major component of a flat plate solar collector consists of an absorber which is basically made of several narrow metal strip and pipe. They act as a conductive material that absorb heat from the incoming solar energy and then transfer it to the circulating fluid in the pipe to increase the temperature of the working fluid. The thermal performance of the collector is usually depending on the types of absorber material. The aim of this study is to determine the effect of different types of material absorber on the thermal performance of solar collector. The use of the same tube diameter size for risers and header were considered in the present study. The two types of absorber materials used in the current work are copper and aluminum. Both materials have thermal conductivity values of 386 W/mK for copper and 201 W/mK for aluminum respectively. The thermal performance characterization was performed under steady state condition according to the European Standard EN 12975. Collected data was processed by least square method (Multiple Linear Regression) to get collector performance parameters such as collector efficiency and heat losses. The test results show that there is no a significant difference of the collector thermal performance values in the use of the copper and aluminum material as an absorber. Furthermore, aluminum material provides an advantage in terms of thermal performance and production costs due to the higher thermal conductivity value and the lower material price and lower material density.