The effect of solar water heater performance by variation of the plate shaped

Abstract

The vital component of a solar water heater system is a solar energy collector which is also known as a heat absorber unit. Solar collectors or heat absorbers can convert from solar radiation energy into thermal energy. So the aims of this study to experiment the increasing of water temperature caused by the variation of the solar water heater collector plate. The methodology of this experiment has variated the shape of the plate absorber from the flat plate collector named as plate collector A (quadrangle-folded), and a flat plate collector called as B plate collector B (triangle-folded). The collector uses a stainless steel plate with a dimension of 1.5 × 0.8 m where each collector has a variety of plate folded. Fluid flowed through a 1 inch (diameter) copper pipe with 1.4 m of length and isolated using rubber to minimize wasted heat. The results show that flat plate collector B has a higher efficiency compared to the flat plate collector A. The highest of fluid output temperature found in collector B at 67 °C and a solar intensity is 1198 W/m2. The highest useful energy is 209.91 Watts at 13.30 WIB (Western Indonesia time), and the highest efficiency is 16.23% at 13.00 WIB (in collector B).