Case study on spiral solar collector performance with lens

Abstract

The main objective of this study was to compare between two scenarios of spiral collector; the first one without lens and the other with lens. In the two scenarios, the spiral collector were fabricated from copper tube with 10 mm inner diameter, 15 m length and absorber area 0.5 m2. The lens was selected as acrylic flat lens with transmittance (80 to 90)% and focal distance is 1.3 m. Experiments were carried out at water mass flow rate 0.5 kg/min under the period between 1st to 31th of December over the ambient temperature range of 12 to 17 ℃ and hourly solar radiation range of 525 to 654 W/m2. The experimental results show that the maximum outlet-temperature, useful energy and efficiency was found to be about 19 ℃, 109 W, 35% respectively in scenario of spiral collector without lens. While, in the scenario of spiral with lens was found to be about 21 ℃, 178 W, 60% respectively. As compared between the two scenario, the lens was enhanced the efficiency of spiral collector by 25%.

Keywords

• flat plate collector (fpc)
• spiral collector
• lens
• efficiency