Performance of the Solar Thermal Hot Water System at the Southland Leisure Centre
Date
2014-09-30
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Abstract
Solar thermal water heating is a major application of renewable energy. Canada’s renewable energy utilization is very low in fulfilling its hot water demands. Though Alberta has a good solar energy potential, it is seldom used. Possibly the biggest application is the solar thermal system with 150 evacuated tube collectors (ETCs) which was installed by the City of Calgary on the roof of the Southland Leisure Centre (SLC). The system pre-heats the swimming pool water. Expansions of City of Calgary’s solar thermal water heating may well depend on the performance of the SLC system.
Important parameters of two collectors in the system were measured to compute efficiency during seven months. Among them, global solar radiation indicated the total energy received by the collectors. The wind speed and direction used to assess the convective heat transfer losses. Panel inlet and outlet temperatures and flow rate of working fluid provided the useful energy absorbed. Ambient temperature was recorded to estimate temperature rise of the collector. A data logger monitored the solar radiation and wind while a special purpose monitoring system collected temperatures and flow rate.
The efficiency of the collectors was computed based on steady and unsteady state energy balances. Experiment data were compared with the efficiency data measured by the Fraunhofer Institute (Germany) for the same collector type according to the appropriate international standard. Performance indicators were unsteady efficiency and the ratio of Unsteady/Steady terms in the energy equation. Unsteady state efficiency was very low compared to the international test standard and the ratio of Unsteady/Steady was very high. It was concluded that the operating efficiency of collectors is lower than the expected efficiency and the unsteady factors are dominant in the system.
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Engineering--Mechanical
Citation
Athaudage Dona, N. (2014). Performance of the Solar Thermal Hot Water System at the Southland Leisure Centre (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27301