SIDE-BY-SIDE TESTS OF DIFFERENTLY DESIGNED EVACUATED TUBULAR COLLECTORS

Six differently designed evacuated tubular collectors, ETCs, utilizing solar radiation from all directions, have been investigated experimentally. The evacuated tubular solar collectors investigated include one SLL all-glass ETC from Tshinghua Solar Co., four heat pipe ETCs from Sunda Technolgoy Co. and one all-glass ETC with heat pipe from Exoheat AB. The collectors have been investigated side-by-side in an outdoor test facility for a long period. During the measurements, the operating conditions – such as weather conditions, inlet and mean solar collector fluid temperatures have been the same. Thus a direct performance comparison is possible. The results of the measurements will be presented in this paper. Among other things, the influence on the thermal performance of the absorber design will be explained. Further, it will be illustrated how the thermal performances of the different collector types depend on the operating conditions and the time of the year and the collector performances will be compared.