Design and Development of an Innovative Flat Plate Solar Collector

• Main Author: Raudhah Binti Ab Majid, Raudhah
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Universiti Teknologi Petronas 2010
• Subjects: TJ Mechanical engineering and machinery
• Online Access: http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/1414/1/DISSERTATION_RAUDHAH_BINTI_AB_MAJID_9219_MECHANICAL_ENGINEERING.pdf; http://utpedia.utp.edu.my/1414/

Over the past few years, considerable progress has been made in reducing the energy consumption for space heating. This is mostly achieved by using the energy conservation and traditional solar technologies. Solar collector has already been designed but innovation can be made to the current design to make it perform better and reach a very low level of energy consumption. The efficiency of the existing solar collector is on the lower side because of solar losses from the absorber plate to the surrounding and a major part of absorbed energy is lost to the sky because of the radiation and convection losses from top of the absorber plate. With the transparent insulation technology such as transparent honeycomb, the performance of the solar collector can be improved. The prototype would be use to make an experiment evaluating the new design effectiveness in improving the flat plate performances. The addition of transparent honeycomb insulator would suppress the connection current between absorber plate and glazing, thus reducing the top convection losses, without much affecting the heat gains. This report contains Introduction which explains the project background, problem statement, and limitations of the project. Literature review contains the study of flat plate collector, transparent insulation technology and the transparent honeycomb. Methodology discussed the procedures involved in doing this project and the Gantt chart for the project. Results & discussion contain the design parameter that has been taken into consideration for the project, calculation made for the prototype, the design of the prototype with results from experiments. Conclusion was made based on what have been learnt from the report, recommendation for the project and lastly references used throughout the project.