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Experimental study on thermal performance of filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube

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Abstract

The filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube, in which the filled layer is used to transfer energy absorbed by working fluid in the U-tube, is proposed to eliminate the effect of thermal resistance between the absorber tube and copper fin of the conventional solar collector. In this paper, the thermal performance of the filled-type evacuated tube was researched by means of experimental study. In order to avoid the effect of some uncertain factors, the single collector tube was considered as investigated objective. The test setup of the thermal performance of the filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube was established. The results show that the filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube has a favorable thermal performance compared with the evacuated tube with copper fin. The heat efficiency of filled-type evacuated tube is higher than that of copper fin evacuated tube by 12%. The useful energy gain of filled-type evacuated tube is 22% higher than that of copper fin evacuated tube at the practical irradiance received I T = 800 W/m2 and flow rate M f = 0.005 L/s. In addition, the exergy efficiency of the filled-type evacuated tube is higher than that of copper fin evacuated tube.

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Abbreviations

A a :

Protection area of absorber tube, m2

C p :

Specific heat of working fluid, J/kg K

I T :

Solar irradiance, W/m2

M f :

Mass flow rate of working fluid, kg/s

R :

Ratio of irradiance on a tilted plane to that on the horizontal surface

R ρ :

Reflected irradiance from the surroundings on the surface

Q e :

Quantity of heat transferred to the working fluid, W

T :

Temperature, K

η i :

Heat efficiency

η e :

Exergy efficiency

β :

Tilt angle of collector

δ :

Declination angle

φ :

Local latitude

ω :

Hour angle

ρ g :

Diffuse reflectance of surroundings

a:

Ambient

b:

Beam

d:

Diffuse

s:

Sun

i:

Inlet

o:

Outlet

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Acknowledgments

The authors are gratefully to the financial support by China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (20090461169). The research presented in this paper was financially supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51078053). And they also greatly appreciate for the support of provincial key labs open foundation of Shenyang Jianzhu University (JN-200903).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Infrastructure Engineering, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Ruobing Liang, Liangdong Ma, Jili Zhang & Dan Zhao

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  1. Ruobing Liang
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Correspondence to Jili Zhang.

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Liang, R., Ma, L., Zhang, J. et al. Experimental study on thermal performance of filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube. Heat Mass Transfer 48, 989–997 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00231-011-0912-7

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