• A contribution to a numerical characterization of the thermal transfers in a saw tooth solar collector
• Author  :  FOUAKEU NANFACK Gildas Armel, TETANG FOKONE Abraham, EDOUN Marcel, KUITCHE Alexis, ZEGHMATI Belkacem
• Pages   :  200-206, DOI: https://doi.org/10.14741/ijtt/v.9.3.1
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• Abstract

In this study, we have developed and modeled a saw tooth solar collector. It is a solar collector with single pass between the transparent cover and the absorber fixed on the insulator. The cover is double glasses with the plane upper glass and the lower glass in the shape from saw teeth. The absorber is also in the shape of saw tooth. After having chosen the mathematical models describing the thermal behavior of the prototype, the equations governing the transfers in the solar collector were based on the analogy between heat transfer and electric transfer. The algebraic systems of equations deduced from a discretization of these equations by an implicit method to finite differences are solved by Gauss algorithm. The theoretical characterization was compared with that experimental particularly for the collector outlet temperature and the absorber temperature. The analysis of the temperature profiles showed that at midday sun for an air velocity of 0.3 m/s, the temperature of the air at collector outlet for a theoretical characterization reaches 79.19 °C whereas that of the practical characterization is only 77.7 °C thus guaranteeing a total output of 22.15 %, and 22 % respectively for the theoretical characterization and the experimental when characterization sunshine is maximum. The results obtained by the models compared, concerning, show that calculations resulting from this study result closer to those from the undertaken experiments.

Keywords: Solar collector, convection coefficient, saw tooth, thermal transfer, numerical characterization.