Gaudino, E.; Caldarelli, A.; Russo, R.; Musto, M. Formulation of an Efficiency Model Valid for High Vacuum Flat Plate Collectors. Energies2023, 16, 7650.
Gaudino, E.; Caldarelli, A.; Russo, R.; Musto, M. Formulation of an Efficiency Model Valid for High Vacuum Flat Plate Collectors. Energies 2023, 16, 7650.
Gaudino, E.; Caldarelli, A.; Russo, R.; Musto, M. Formulation of an Efficiency Model Valid for High Vacuum Flat Plate Collectors. Energies2023, 16, 7650.
Gaudino, E.; Caldarelli, A.; Russo, R.; Musto, M. Formulation of an Efficiency Model Valid for High Vacuum Flat Plate Collectors. Energies 2023, 16, 7650.
Abstract
High Vacuum Flat Plate Collectors (HVFPCs) are the only type of Flat Plate Thermal Collectors capable of producing thermal energy for middle-temperature applications (until 180 °C). As the trend of research plans to develop new Selective Solar Absorbers to extend the range of HVFPC application until 250 °C, it is necessary to correctly evaluate the collector efficiency up to such temperature to predict the energy production accurately. We propose an efficiency model for these collectors based on the selective absorber optical properties. The proposed efficiency model explicitly includes the radiative heat exchange with the ambient, which is the main source of thermal losses for evacuated collectors at high temperatures. It also decouples the radiative losses that depend on the optical properties of the absorber adopted from the other thermal losses due to HVFPC architecture.
The model has been validated by applying it to MT-Power HVFPC manufactured by TVP-Solar, and it has been used to predict the efficiency and energy production of HVFPC equipped with new, optimized selective solar absorbers developed in recent years.
Keywords
solar energy; High Vacuum Flat Plate Collectors; HVFP; Thermal efficiency model; Solar collector performance evaluation
Subject
Engineering, Energy and Fuel Technology
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
