EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL STUDY INTO SOLAR AIR COLLECTORS WITH INTEGRATED LATENT HEAT THERMAL STORAGE

The main goal of the study was to assess the thermal performance of a solar air collector with latent heat storage integrated with the solar absorber plate. The investigations involved two flat plate, single-glazed, front-and-back pass experimental solar air collectors of the same dimensions. One of the collectors had a solar absorber plate made of sheet metal while the solar absorber plate of the other collector consisted of aluminum containers filled with paraffin-based phase change material (PCM). The experiments were performed under real climatic conditions. The collectors were positioned side by side with the same tilt and the same orientation. A numerical model of the collectors was created in the TRNSYS simulation tool with the use of an in-house model for latent heat thermal storage.