An experimental study on the operating performance of facade installed natural circulation type solar thermal system

The operation of the natural circulation type solar heating systems with facade integrated collector was analyzed by experiment. Two different types of flat plate solar collectors were used for these experiments. One was for the normal flat plate solar collector with the size of 1m*2m and the other was for the large size solar collector with (1m*4m). The experiments were carried out to investigate the effect of the series or parallel connection method on the performance of the collectors. As a result, the solar thermal system which is installed on the wall or facade would be applicable for the natural circulation type if the system design reflects various parameters, including collector connecting method(series or parallel), to provide enough vertical height between collector and storage tank, and to reduce pressure loss due to collector and piping network, etc. The natural circulation type of solar thermal system as proposed in this study can increase the system reliability by removing or minimizing the use of the components such as pump, controller, sensors which may cause serious troubles of the system for a long-time operation