Solar thermal collectors and applications
Solar collectors
Solar energy collectors are special kind of heat exchangers that transform solar radiation energy to internal energy of the transport medium. The major component of any solar system is the solar collector. This is a device which absorbs the incoming solar radiation, converts it into heat, and transfers this heat to a fluid (usually air, water, or oil) flowing through the collector. The solar energy thus collected is carried from the circulating fluid either directly to the hot water or space conditioning equipment, or to a thermal energy storage tank from which can be drawn for use at night and/or cloudy days.
There are basically two types of solar collectors: nonconcentrating or stationary and concentrating. A nonconcentrating collector has the same area for intercepting and for absorbing solar radiation, whereas a sun-tracking concentrating solar collector usually has concave reflecting surfaces to intercept and focus the sun’s beam radiation to a smaller receiving area, thereby increasing the radiation flux. A large number of solar collectors are available in the market. A comprehensive list is shown in Table 1 [20].
In this section a review of the various types of collectors currently available will be presented. This includes FPC, ETC, and concentrating collectors.
