Thermal performance of gas-filled flat plate solar collectors
Journal article, 2009

A sealed space between absorber and cover glass in a flat plate solar collector makes it possible to reduce the influence of humidity condensate and dust at the same time as the enclosed space can be filled with a suitable gas for lowering the heat losses. This article describes the influence of different gases on the heat losses in a typical flat plate solar collector. A model of a gas-filled flat plate solar collector was built in Matlab with standard heat transfer formulas. The results show that the overall heat loss can be reduced by up to 20% when changing from air to an inert gas. It is further possible to reduce the distance between absorber and cover in order to reduce the mechanical stresses in the material with similar heat losses.

Thermal performance

gas-filled flat plate solar collectors

Author

Johan Vestlund

Solar Energy Research Center SERC

Mats Rönnelid

Solar Energy Research Center SERC

Jan-Olof Dalenbäck

Chalmers, Energy and Environment, Building Services Engineering

Solar Energy

0038-092X (ISSN)

Vol. 83 6 896-904

Subject Categories

Building Technologies

DOI

10.1016/j.solener.2008.12.005

More information

Created

10/8/2017