EXPERIMENTAL STUDY ABOUT THE EFFECT OF SOLAR COLLECTORS DESIGN AND SHAPE ON THERMAL PERFORMANCE

Abstract

In this paper, a practical study was carried out on solar water heaters of collector reservoirs with no loads of different designs for city Kirkuk / Iraq. The study includes three of solar water heaters which are, the first one is a Prismatic cut off the triangle- based (A) type and the second is Parabola type (B) and the third on is transparent three faceted glass Pyramid collector (C). In the research the consideration of using a simple and easy handling and transporting a solar heater reservoir design, of a three –faceted transparent glass Pyramid collector, with dimension of (150*150*150)cm with high of (70cm), this design is characterized by a good efficiency performance, which where all the sun ray falls on all the directions from sunrise till sunset without shadows because of the vast area of the condensation surface ( transparent cover) represented by the three-faceted Pyramid, and then by comparing its thermal performance with Prismatic one and the Parabola collector, and through the results , we found that the Pyramid (C) design have the higher thermal performance comparing to the other collectors (A&B).Keywords: Solar Energy, Solar Collectors, Pyramid Collector, thermal performance.