Efficiency of Evacuated Tubular Solar Thermal Collector

J. Ma and X. Wei
Southeastern Louisiana University
Hammond, LA
Published in 2011

Using COMSOL® 3.5a, models were created to simulate the heat transfer between the working fluid and the selective coating as well as the natural convection of the working fluid itself. In these models, a constant heat input on half of the selective coating facing the sun was considered as energy input from the sun, and the open end of the tube, where the working fluid can flow in and out of the collector, was treated as two ports with the upper half as an outlet and the lower half as an inlet.

The volume force in the Weakly Compressible Navier-Strokes equation was calculated based on the volume change of the working fluid and the volume change itself can be derived from the temperature change and the coefficient of thermal expansion of the working fluid.

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