Performance Evaluation of Double Glaze Flat Plate Solar Thermal Collector

Abstract

One of the most popular thermal system is Flat Plate Solar Collector (FPSC) which can transform solar energy into useful thermal energy of the fluids. The applications of FPSC are water heating, solar cooling, heat process and room heating etc. FPSCs are very simple in design and can be fabricated locally. The major drawback of FPSC is its low performance. Further, performance of FPSCs is low due high emissivity of absorber plate particular at high temperature. Additionally, absorption of solar radiation in glass cover increase its temperature and leading to high values of conductive and radiative heat transfer coefficient which causes to high heat loss. To overcome these high heat loss, double glazing can utilized as heat barrier and serves as opaque for insolation. This paper present the evaluation of the performance of double glazed solar collector and the results have been compared with the results of single glazed collector.