Nanoparticles Ni electroplating and black paint for solar collector applications

A nanoparticles layer of bright nickel base was deposited on copper substrates using electrodeposition technique before spraying the paint. IR reflectance of the paint was found to be around 0.4 without bright nickel layer and the reflectance increased to 0.6 at a Ni layer thickness of 750 nm. The efficiency of the constructed solar collectors using black paint and black paint combined with bright nickel was found to be better than black paint individually. After aging tests under high temperature, Bright nickel improved the stability of the absorber paint. The collector optical gain FR(sa) was lowered by 24.7% for the commercial paint and lowered by 19.3% for the commercial paint combined with bright nickel. The overall heat loss FR(UL) was increased by 3.3% for the commercial paint and increased by 2.7% for the commercial paint combined with bright nickel after the temperature aging test. (C) 2016 Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).