Thermal performance analysis of a flat plate solar air collector based on micro-heat pipe arrays

Solar air collector (SAC) is a device, which can absorb solar energy and transfer them as the heat energy to the air. And it can be used in the room heating, strengthening ventilation, drying and dehumidification system, etc., conveniently. A novel flat plate solar collector with micro-heat pipe arrays (MHPA-FPSAC) is proposed, which is characterized by low cost, easy fabrication, and modularity. In the proposed structure, absorber film plate layer can be well contacted with the whole area of evaporation section of MHPA, which can enlarge the effective heat transfer area of the collector, the indirect contact way of the air and absorber plate heat exchanger achieve the physical isolation between them, which solve the contradiction problem (strengthen heat transfer along with increasing of heat loss) exists in the traditional flat plate air collector, well. The thermal efficiency of the collector increases with increasing flow velocity and its average value reaches at 68% during the test period when the air volume flow rate equals to 240 m³/h. The MATLAB calculation model built in this paper coincides well with the experiment results, which can be used in the performance investigation of the collector.