No abstract

No abstract

Article presents an experimental investigation for the comparison of thermal performance of three different configurations flat plate solar collector. These flat plate solar collectors consist of glass cover and aluminium absorber plate which is painted with black paint. The edge and bottom surfaces are thermally insulated with a polystyrene layer for the first configuration, a polystyrene layer covered with a sheet of aluminium paper for the second one and a polystyrene layer covered with a sheet of aluminium paper and containing baffles for the third configuration. In this experiment, thermal efficiency of flat plate solar collector integrated with baffles was studied and compared with the two ordinary flat plate collectors. The results showed that integrating flat plate solar collector with baffles significantly increased the thermal efficiency of the system. It was noted that a mean thermal efficiency is 20.3 %, 29.8 % and 35.1 % for the first, second and third configuration, respectively. The results show a maximum temperature rise of 23.5 °C, 31.6 °C and 34.6 °C with respect to the inlet air temperature, for the first, second and third configuration, respectively. Baffles improve the thermal performance of the flat plate solar collector by increasing the outlet temperature.