Performance Analysis of Flat Plate Solar Water Heater by Changing the Heat Pipe Material

Abstract:

Heating of water for domestic purpose is simple and effective way of utilizing solar energy. Though the initial cost of solar water heating system is high, the maintenance cost and zero green energy cost. To overcome the problem of high initial cost, this paper suggests utilizing alternative material with very good absorbing efficiency material instead of copper. The stainless steel tube coated with epoxy-polyether and aluminium with copper oxide coating are used as a header and riser tube material instead of copper which is in practice now-a-days. This paper introduces a new heating system which has flat plate collector of effective performance at low cost even though stainless steel and aluminium has low thermal conductivity. Experiments have been conducted by using copper, stainless steel and aluminium tubes as header and riser tubes. The result shows that copper, aluminium and stainless bestow the same performance. Also the cost of stainless tube with epoxy-polyether and aluminium with copper oxide are less than that of copper tube.

• Periodical: Advanced Materials Research (Volume 768)
• Pages: 64-69
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.4028/www.scientific.net/AMR.768.64
• Online since: September 2013
• Authors: P. Sivakumar, W. Christ Raj, N. Jaya Malathi, S. Balakrishnan
• Keywords: Aluminum Tube, Copper Oxide, Epoxy-Polyether, Flat Plate Collector (FPC), Stainless Steel Tube

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