Thermal Properties Study of a Solar Water Heater Tank with a Mantle Exchanger

The development and use of renewable energy sources and technologies are becoming vital for the management of energy supply and demand. For development solar water heaters, the incentive programs are supported by the Algerian government to generalize the using of this kind of energy especially in Sahara. This study is a part of program to develop a new solar water heater in UDES (Algeria). In this research work, the thermal performance of a solar water heater with a mantle heat exchanger is investigated numerically using Comsol Multyphysics software. The objective is to investigate the influence of the mantle heat exchanger thickness on the performance of solar water heaters. The results show, for 160 liters capacity of the solar water heaters tank, the 13mm of the heat exchanger thickness leads to improve the efficiency of the solar water heater.