CFD STUDY OF AN INTEGRATED COLLECTOR STORAGE DOMESTIC SOLAR HOT WATER SYSTEM

摘要

Integrated Collector Storage (ICS) is a long established simple low cost Solar Water Heater (SWH) configuration. Previous studies at Edinburgh Napier University have shown that the ICS-SWH has potential to significantly reduce domestic energy requirements for heating water as part of a Domestic Hot Water (DHW) system. The ICS-SWH combines the solar collector with a storage tank into a single unit. The configuration proposed for study incorporates an embedded heating element to provide a self-contained domestic hot water (DHW) system. This potentially offers a dramatic simplification of SWH installation, by removing the requirement for an auxiliary heating system to provide additional heat when required as well as safe operation (e.g. Pasteurisation). The proposed system also utilizes an inlet diffuser designed to reduce the disruption to the stratification within the storage during and following draw-off which improves the thermal efficiency of the unit. A Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD) study has been performed to model the internal flow and heat transfer regimes within this new ICS-SWH configuration.