OPTIMIZATION OF YIELD OF A FLAT PLATE SOLAR WATER COLLECTOR BY SIMULATION WITH MATLAB

Abstract

This study consists at the modeling and the application of numerical methods in order to optimize the performance of a flat-water solar collector under the meteorological conditions of Mali, particularly in the month of January when the sunshine is low and hot water consumption significant. The results obtained show that when the thickness of the glass pane is increased from 2mm to 5mm, the instantaneous efficiency of the solar collector at the beginning increases from 41.46% to 41.49% with a maximum solar radiation intensity of 462 W/m2 and an average wind speed of 3.5 m/s. When the thickness of the absorber is increased from 4mm to 5 mm, the instantaneous efficiency of the solar collector can reach from 40.64% to 41.65%. When the absorber thickness reaches 6mm, the instantaneous efficiency of the solar collector decreases from 42.35 to 42.14%. Increasing the thickness of the collector's absorber plate can significantly improve the collector's instantaneous efficiency. Increasing the thickness of the lateral side insulation does not contribute to improving the collector's instantaneous efficiency. When the thickness of the lateral side insulation of the collector increases from 2cm to 8cm, the instantaneous efficiency of the collector increases from 53.13% to 53.0%. When the mass flow rate of the fluid increases from 0.0265 Kg/s to 0.04 kg/s, the efficiency increases from 53.14% to 59.18%. This study also showed that these parameters have very little influence on the temperature of the heat transfer fluid.