Experimental Investigation of Thermal Performance Evaluation of Solar Flat Plate Collector

A flat plate collector is a simple and widely used device for space heating, domestic and industrial hot water applications. In this study, a device is fabricated and installed in Sultanpur for conducting experiments on flat plate collector to obtain the collector efficiency, rate of fluid heating and cooling and the temperature difference of fluid at inlet and outlet of the collector. The study made an attempt to enhance efficiency as compared to the normal flat plate collector by improving the collector design and varying the tilt angle, and mass flow rates. From the experiments, it was concluded that the efficiency is directly proportional to mass flow rate and inversely proportional to the wind speed. It was also found that factor like plate absorptive, glass cover emissivity, number of the glass cover and tilt angle and atmospheric condition affect the performance of flat plate collector. (c) 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Selection and peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the International Conference on Advances in Materials and Manufacturing Applications, IConAMMA 2018.