Experimental determination of the effect of tube spacing on the performance of a flat plate solar collector

摘要

The objective of the present work is to study the effect of tube spacing on the performance of a Flat Plate Collector (FPC). A comparative study of the performance of two FPC with average adjacent tube spacing of 20 cm and 11 cm was carried out for five days in July, 2011. Comparison shows that both the inlet and the outlet temperature of collector B with adjacent tube spacing of 20 cm are persistently higher than that of Collector A with adjacent tube spacing of 11 cm for most hours of the day. Efficiency 0f 10% and 21% was recorded for collector A and B respectively on day 1 while the values dropped to almost half on day 2 and to less than 5% on days 3, 4 and 5 for both collectors due to frequent cloud cover and rain. It can be inferred that adjacent tube spacing has significant effect on the performance of a flat plate collector.