Generating Heated Air Through Solar Thermal Collectors
Joshua Greatorex-Davies a
a Swansea University, Singleton Park, Swansea, United Kingdom
Proceedings of SUNRISE September Symposium 2021 ‘Powering Green Recovery’ (SUNRISEIII)
Online, Spain, 2021 September 20th - 22nd
Organizers: Hari Upadhyaya, Adrian Walters, James Durrant, Sara Walters and Georgia Bevan
Invited Speaker, Joshua Greatorex-Davies, presentation 059
Publication date: 14th September 2021

Solar thermal collectors provide heated air by absorbing solar radiation. This heated air can then be used to supply heated air to a desalination or drying unit. The purpose of this work is to assess the air heating capacity of a glazed collector by assessing variables such as steel colour and coating type, glass coating type and configuration, and design parameters such as the air gap between the steel and the glass. A collector has been constructed from white acrylic and a solar rig has been used to simulate sunlight conditions. The results show a good negative correlation between the solar reflective index and the temperature uplift from ambient under solar radiation for the steel samples. However, there seems to be no clear correlation between the steel coating type and the temperature uplift from ambient. The glass tests show that the glass with a low-emissivity coating performs the best. However, when the glazed collector is constructed, the low-emissivity coating has a negative effect on the temperature uplift of the air and the steel, meaing that the uncoated glass has a higher temperature uplift for the air and the steel.

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