Determination of thermal performance of a solar collector by using dynamic test method

In Turkey at the location where solar energy is rich, liquid-glazed type flat plate solar collectors have been widely used to obtain domestic hot water for many years. However, it is generally faced some products which do not fulfill the requirements of the final consumers and have low thermal efficiencies since this type of collectors are easily manufactured. In order to prevent from this issue, it is needed to do thermal performance tests of the solar collectors. The thermal performance tests are performed under the steady state and dynamic operating conditions. In this study, thermal performance of a liquid based (water), glazed (glass) type solar collector is determined under the dynamic operating conditions. For this purpose, thermal equation of the collector is developed, and an experimental setup is installed. Experiments are performed for four different inlet temperatures (25 degrees C, 30 degrees C, 45 degrees C, 60 C) and constant mass flow rate (0.037 kg/s) at outdoor conditions. Constants in the equation are solved by Multiple Regression (MLR) method. Results of the experimental study and thermal equation show that a fairly similar characterization is obtained.