PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF A SOLAR CONCRETE COLLECTOR

This article presents a transient analysis of solar concrete collectors used for providing domestic hot water. A mathematical model has been developed to estimate the performance of such collectors. This involves the solution of the two-dimensional time-dependent heat conduction equation with appropriate initial and boundary conditions. An explicit finite difference technique has been used for the purpose, and calculations have been carried out to validate the model by comparing its predictions with several sets of experimental data. Further, a parametric calculation and sensitivity analysis have been done to study the effect of various values of the governing parameters on the collector performance.