Concrete Solar Collector
Concrete solar collector is an attempt to create an effective alternative for conventional solar collectors. Concrete has high heat storage capacity. Also, the problem of corrosion automatically gets eliminated due to the alkaline characteristic of cement
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Abstract Concrete solar collector is an attempt to create an effective alternative for conventional solar collectors. Concrete has high heat storage capacity. Also, the problem of corrosion automatically gets eliminated due to the alkaline characteristic of cement. Cement concrete plays the role of heat absorber while the flow tubes are made up of copper. For the enhancement of heat transfer, dimpled surface copper flow tubes are used. Dimples improve the heat transfer rate with very little pressure drop. The project consists of a 2 m 1 m setup and it deals with analyzing its performance under various conditions. For testing, we use pyranometer for measuring solar radiation, thermocouples for measuring the temperature of inlet and outlet water and digital temperature indicator for temperature indication. Keywords Concrete collector Pyranometer Thermocouple
Dimple surface Digital temperature indicator
1 Introduction Concrete solar collector is an attempt to create an alternative for conventional solar collectors. The use of copper absorber plates and copper flow tubes leads to the elevated cost of conventional solar water heater. It aims at reducing this cost without negatively affecting the performance of the collector. Experiment used polyvinyl chloride pipes embedded into concrete supported with wire mesh. Priority was given to identify tube-to-tube spacing as a measure and according to it the pitch was defined. The drop in the water pressure while flowing through the tubes was also noted [1]. Experimental study using aluminum tubes embedded in concrete was also done. Here, parallel pattern was considered for laying of flow tubes in the P.M. Waghmare (&) S.B. Sollapur S.M. Wange Mechanical Engineering Department, Savitribai Phule Pune University, Pune, India e-mail: [email protected] S.B. Sollapur e-mail: [email protected] © Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2018 S. SenGupta et al. (eds.), Advances in Smart Grid and Renewable Energy, Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering 435, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4286-7_46
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structure. The flow tubes are embedded in the concrete in such a way that 30% of the tube surface remains exposed the sun while the remaining portion in buried in the concrete [2]. Use of dimpled surface further elevates the heat transfer rates. Dimples can increase the outlet temperature as they create disturbance in the water passage, thus enhancing the heat transfer rate which increases in temperature [3].
2 Use of Concrete as Absorber The performance of the absorber component partially depends on two properties of the material used for the surface finish of the absorber—absorptivity and emissivity. Concrete can absorb 65% of light incident upon it. Blackening its surface can further increase this percentage up to 96%. It offers high emissivity of 0.87. Where concrete is used both to absorb and to store solar energy, the surface exposed to solar radiation should be as dark as possible.
3 Components of Concrete Collector A c
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