A Calculation Method of Average Fluid Temperature in Solar Collector

Abstract

The solar collector is an important equipment for photo-thermal conversion. It can be used not only for centralized energy utilization by tower thermal power generation technology, but also for distributed energy utilization by disc thermal power generation technology. Therefore, it is necessary to evaluate the thermal performance of solar collectors. A new method was proposed to calculate the average fluid temperature of solar collectors. The experimental results show that the calculation results are in good agreement with the experimental data, which proves that the method can predict the average fluid temperature of solar collector. The effect of different parameters on thermal efficiency was also investigated to better acquire the thermal performance of solar collectors. The results show that when the input power is constant, increasing the flow rate can effectively improve the efficiency of solar collector. When the flow rate is constant, the efficiency of solar collector increases first and then decreases with the increase of input power. The efficiency of solar collector is inversely proportional to the inlet temperature and proportional to the ambient temperature.

Keywords

• solar thermal power generation
• solar collector
• average fluid temperature
• thermal performance