Study on the Performance of the Flat-Plate Solar Collectors

평면식 태양열 집열기의 성능에 관한 연구

Solar energy is a potential source of power that offers much promise being used for low-temperature applications like drying farm crops, space heating, and water heating for domestic uses. Already much of it are being used for those purpose in foreign countries. However, very little research has been done to determine the possibility of using the solar energy in Korea. This study was conducted to develop the general prediction equation of the total radiation on a horizontal surface in Daejeon area based on 5 years 91972, Jun.1-1976. Dec.31) meteorological data (bright sunshine hours, average total horizontal radiation), and to obtain experimentally the thermal efficiency of solar air and water collectors, which will be used as a basic data of designing flat-plate solar collector system.In addition to the thermal efficiency of the collectorsthe relationship among those factors affecting it such as weather condition, orientation factor, and tilted angle of collector was analyzed. The results of this study were as follows. 1. The general predicted equation of the total radiation on a horizontal surface in Daejeon area based on bright sunshine hours was developed as $H_{av} =(1.546\frac{n}{N}-0.582)H_o$. Predicting the total radiation on a horizontal surface by the above equation was thought to be possible because to values of 0.882 was smaller than any t values at above 0.05 level on the basis of two tailed test of the difference between the calculated and the recorded values. 2.It was observed that optimum tilt angle of the collector in the summer and the autumn drying season was 13 degrees and 51 degrees respectively, these values could be obtained by adding or substracting approximately 25 degrees from the latitude of this area $(36.3^{\circ}N)$ .The relationship between orientation factor and declination of sun at suitable tilt angle of 33 degrees $(s=0.9\O)$ was shown at Fig.4. 3.The thermal efficiency of solar wdter collector was shown 13.4-51. 6% on Aug. 15 (the minimum radiation recorded) and 43.8 ~537% Aug.20 (the maximum radiation recorded), and 13.8~ 46.6 and 44.3~ 49.7 were shown on each corresponding day. 4.The thermal efficiency of the collectors according to the weather condition was shown a big difference of about 10% between the day of the maximum radiation recorded and the minimum, but the differen of efficiency between the air and the water collector was at most 2 ~ 3%. 5. Even if the efficiency of the solar water collector was a little higher than the solar air collector, for drying farm products, the solar air collector was thought to be more effective because the air heated by collector could be directly used for drying them.