Unglazed selective absorber solar air collector: Heat exchange analysis

Unglazed solar air collectors show promise for applications such as ventilation air heating or crop drying. In this paper a mathematical model is developed to analyze the heat exchanges in an unglazed non-porous selective absorber air heater. It is shown that at quasi-steady state the energy balance equations of the components of the collector cascade into a single first order differential equation. The solution of this differential equation is written down as an explicit expression of the local temperature of the fluid flowing in the collector in terms of the time dependent solar intensity. The effect of various parameters such as the inlet fluid temperature, the mass flow rate, and the depth of the air channel on the thermal performances of the unglazed selective absorber collector are also studied. These performances are comparable to those of a conventional two glass covers air collector for low wind speeds.