Experimental Analysis on Fabricated Parabolic Solar Collector with Various Flowing Fluids and Pipe Materials

Abstract

This work is accomplished on fabricated parabolic solar collector. Numbers of experiments are performed on collector at different operating conditions with tracking mode III. Operating conditions are; copper-water arrangement, copper-engine oil arrangement, mild steel-water arrangement and mild steel-engine oil arrangement at 12:30PM, at 01:30PM, 02:30PM and at 03:30PM. Then fluid outlet temperature, inside/outside pipe surface temperatures, heat transfer rate, instantaneous efficiency, convective heat transfer coefficient, absorbed flux and collector efficient factor are experimentally found. Inlet exergy is also analysed for this solar collector with and without considering Sun’s cone angle. Finally this work can be concluded as – If fluid temperature difference decreases then heat gain rate increases by increasing mass flow rate of fluid. Maximum instantaneous efficiency is achieved with copper pipe. When aperture width, pipe length and mass flow rate of fluid increase then inlet exergy increases.