Solar Thermal Air Collectors

Solar thermal collectors are either non concentrating or concentrating.

Solar thermal air collectors.

The design is very simply an insulated box with a absorber sheet welded to copper pipe that the heat transfer liquid circulates through. Flat plate collectors flat plate collectors are the most common and widely used style of solar therm al collector for domestic hot water applications. The top sheet of a glazed system has a transparent top layer and an insulated surrounding frame. They are among the most efficient and economical solar thermal technologies available and are mostly used in the commercial sector.

A simple solar air collector consists of an absorber material sometimes having a selective surface to capture radiation from the sun and transfers this thermal energy to air via conduction heat transfer this heated air is then ducted to the building space or to the process area where the heated air is used for space heating or process heating needs. 1 these systems are also termed solar walls. Solar air heaters are mostly used for space heating and can be both glazed and unglazed. Solar thermal air collectors.

In fact special unglazed transpired collectors were developed for heating ambient air using the vertical façade of a building as a mounting surface. Solar thermal collectors have been used to heat liquid fluids water glycol ethanol and to heat ambient air.