Paper Title
To Study Thermal Effect of Different Forms of Copper in Flat Plate Collector
Abstract
Flat plate collector is a solar collector which is widely used for domestic and industrial water heating applications
and for applications requiring fluid temperature less than 80 degree Celsius. FPC generally has the following main
components namely absorber plate, top glass cover, heating copper tubes with header and footer and a frame in which all the
components are kept in systematic order. It receives heat by solar radiation, convection and by conduction. Heat is
transferred to liquid (water) flowing through pipes by thermo syphon effect or by pump flow. Conventionally, absorber plate
of FPC is brazed to the copper tubes, due to which there is limited surface heat transfer area between the absorber plate and
the copper tubes. So in order to improve the efficiency of flat plate collector it is necessary to increase the contact surface
area and also there can be increase in efficiency by using porous media. So to overcome this a test setup is fabricated using
different forms of copper such as copper scrap or thin copper wires as packing material for FPC or using a copper plate
having through hole through which water is passed and then experiment are conducted to obtain results regarding the thermal
efficiency of each case and are compared to currently existing FPC water heating system.
Keywords - Flat Plate Collector, Forms of Copper, Solar Water Heater, Compact Design, Improved Efficiency