Hindawi Publishing Corporation
Journal of Energy
Volume 2014, Article ID 247287, 8 pages
[Link]
Research Article
Effect of Glass Thickness on Performance of
Flat Plate Solar Collectors for Fruits Drying
Ramadhani Bakari,1 Rwaichi J. A. Minja,1 and Karoli N. Njau2
1
2
Department of Chemical and Mining Engineering, University of Dar es Salaam, P.O. Box 35131, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
The Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology, Arusha, Tanzania
Correspondence should be addressed to Ramadhani Bakari; ramaringo2006@[Link]
and Rwaichi J. A. Minja; rminja@[Link]
Received 29 August 2013; Revised 21 January 2014; Accepted 23 January 2014; Published 12 March 2014
Academic Editor: S Venkata Mohan
Copyright 2014 Ramadhani Bakari et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly
cited.
This study aimed at investigating the effect of thickness of glazing material on the performance of flat plate solar collectors.
Performance of solar collector is affected by glaze transmittance, absorptance, and reflectance which results into major heat losses
in the system. Four solar collector models with different glass thicknesses were designed, constructed, and experimentally tested
for their performances. Collectors were both oriented to northsouth direction and tilted to an angle of 10 with the ground toward
north direction. The area of each collector model was 0.72 m2 with a depth of 0.15 m. Low iron (extra clear) glass of thicknesses
3 mm, 4 mm, 5 mm, and 6 mm was used as glazing materials. As a control, all collector performances were analysed and compared
using a glass of 5 mm thickness and then with glass of different thickness. The results showed that change in glass thickness results
into variation in collector efficiency. Collector with 4 mm glass thick gave the best efficiency of 35.4% compared to 27.8% for 6 mm
glass thick. However, the use of glass of 4 mm thick needs precautions in handling and during placement to the collector to avoid
extra costs due to breakage.
1. Introduction
In many countries, the use of solar drying systems for agricultural products to conserve vegetables, fruits, and other
crops has been shown to be practical, inexpensive, and environmentally sound approach [1]. Solar dryers offer a cheaper
and an alternative way of processing fruits and vegetables in
clean and hygienic condition within international standards.
Moreover, they save time, occupy less area, improve product
quality, protect the environment, and provide better control
of required drying air condition [2]. However, the availability
of good information is lacking in many countries, where
food-processing systems are mostly needed [1, 3]. Centrally to
that, indirect cabinet dryer with forced convection flow is one
of the best drying methods which can produce high-quality
products and eliminate the risk of spoilage during drying [4,
5]. Although solar air collector is a very important component
in the solar drying system, it has not received much attention
during dryer design [6]. In theory, the performance of
solar collector depends on climatic conditions and several
operating condition such as collector orientation, thickness of
cover materials, wind speed, collector length, collector depth,
and the type of absorber material used [711]. Currently, these
factors are not well considered during solar system design.
Therefore, development of a well-performed solar collector is
of significant economic importance in solar drying system.
This study has dealt with the effect of glass thickness on solar
collector performance.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Flat Plate Solar Collector. Flat plate solar collectors are
special kind of heat exchangers that transfer heat energy
from incident solar radiation to the working fluid [1214].
They perform three functions, absorbing solar radiation,
converting it to heat energy, and transferring the energy
to a working fluid passing through the collector duct [15].
The main use of flat plate solar collectors includes space
2
heating and crop drying [16, 17]. Flat plate solar collector can
heat working fluid to a temperature range of 1050 C above
ambient temperature depending on the design [18]. There are
three principal parts of flat plate solar collector: absorber plate
which absorbs solar radiation and transfers it to the working
fluid, transparent cover which allows short wave radiation to
pass and prevents them from exiting, and insulation which
resists back and rear side heat losses. The most important
advantages of these types of collectors include low construction costs and minimal effect in pressure drops. However, the
main drawback of solar air collectors is the low heat transfer
coefficient between the absorber plate and the air stream due
to poor thermal conductivity and low heat capacity of air [19].
2.2. Glazing Materials. Glazing is the top cover of a solar
collector. It performs three major functions in particular: to
minimize convective and radiant heat loss from absorber, to
transmit the incident solar radiation to the absorber plate
with minimum loss, and to protect the absorber plate from
outside environment [20, 21]. Other important characteristics
of glazing materials are reflection (), absorption (), and
transmission (). In order to attain maximum efficiency,
reflection and absorption should be as low as possible, whilst
transmission should be as high as possible [22]. Therefore,
factors for consideration in selecting the glazing materials
include strength of material, durability, nondegradability
when exposed to the ultraviolet light (UV), and low costs.
Usually the common materials used as glazing materials are
glass and plastics.
Glass is the principal material used to glaze solar collectors [10, 13, 23, 24]. Glass material has highly desirable
property of transmitting as much as 90% of the incoming
short-wave radiation, while virtually none of the long wave
radiation emitted by the absorber plate can escape outwards
by transmission [25]. To be specific, glass cover for solar
collector normally should be at least 0.33 cm thick [26].
Compared to glass cover, a plastic cover possesses high shortand long-wave transmittance and hence high performance.
Generally, the main advantages of plastics are resistance to
breakage, light weight, and low cost. However, plastics have
been reported to have limited life span due to the effect
of UV radiation which reduces its transmissivity [24]. Also,
plastics are transparent to long-wavelength radiation and are
therefore less effective in reducing radiated heat losses from
the absorber plate. In addition, plastics cannot withstand high
temperature encountered in collector especially when the
collector is idle [26].
2.3. Influence of Cover Material on the Collector Performance.
The major heat losses in the collector are from the front cover
(glass cover), since the sides and the back of the collector
are often adequately insulated [24]. Therefore, accurate prediction of the thermal performance of solar collector system
strongly depends on how the glass cover material is analysed.
Though almost all the studies reported assume that glass
cover of a system is transparent for the solar range and opaque
for the infrared radiation [27], only few studies have reported
on the influence of thickness of glazing materials on the
performance of solar collector.
Journal of Energy
Kalidasa et al., 2008, [28] compared a 3 mm and 6 mm
glass covers and reported that solar collector with glass
cover of 3 mm thickness was more efficient compared to the
collector with 6 mm glass thickness. Vejen et al. [29] suggest
that using a glass cover with better optical properties can
improve performance of solar collector by 6%. However, the
author did not give the optimal thickness of glass that gives
best efficiency.
2.4. Heat Transfer in Glazing Material. Energy absorbed by
glass cover depends on temperature difference between glass
and fluid, glass and plate, and glass and ambient:
= ( ) + ( ) + , ( )
+ , ( ) .
(1)
The radiative heat transfer coefficients from the absorber
to the glazing and from the glazing to the ambient are,
respectively, given by
, =
, =
( 2 + 2 ) ( + )
((1/ ) + (1/ ) 1)
( 2 + 2 ) ( + )
((1/ ) 1)
,
(2)
.
The convective heat transfer coefficients for air flowing
over the outside surface of the glass cover were proposed by
Kumar and Mullick [30]. Consider
= 5.7 + 3.8 .
(3)
Upward heat losses are greatly influenced by convective
heat transfer from the upper outermost surface of a solar
collector. This wind induced convective heat transfer has
greater influence on upward heat losses in case of single
glazed collectors
2.5. General Efficiency of Flat Plate Solar Collectors. The
thermal efficiency of a collector is the ratio of the useful
thermal energy to the total incident solar radiation averaged
over the same time interval. Mathematically, the efficiency ()
of a collector is expressed as [18, 31]
=
useful energy
.
solar energy available
(4)
Useful energy for a solar thermal collector is the rate
of thermal energy leaving the collector, usually described in
terms of the rate of energy being added to a heat transfer fluid
passing through the receiver or absorber [13, 32]. Consider
= ( ) .
(5)
The area of the collector on which the solar irradiance
falls is called the aperture area of the collector. Therefore, total
Journal of Energy
energy received by collector (optical energy captured) can be
described by
in = .
(6)
Accordingly, absorptance and transmittance are multiple
effects of optical energy capture and, therefore, these factors
indicate the percentage of the solar rays penetrating the
transparent cover of the collector and the percentage being
absorbed [32]. Consider
in = .
(7)
Figure 1: Solar collector models with 3, 4, 5, and 6 mm glass thick,
respectively.
The rate of useful energy of the collector can be expressed
by using overall heat loss coefficient and the collector temperature as (Yogi and Jan, 2000)
60
useful = in loss = ( ) .
(8)
( )
[ ( )]
(9)
Finally, equation for efficiency of flat plate solar collector
can be given by Hottel-Whillier-Bliss equation [33]
).
= (
(10)
If it is assumed that and are constants for a given
collector and flow rate, then the collector efficiency is a linear
function of the three parameters defining the operating condition: solar irradiance (), fluid inlet temperature ( ), and
collector outlet temperature ( ). Thus, the performance of a
Flat-Plate Collector can be approximated by experimentally
measuring these three parameters, and the efficiency can be
calculated by using [13]
=
].
(11)
3. Materials and Methods
Four similar flat plate solar collectors were used in this
study. Glazing materials used for experiments were low iron
(extra clear) glass of thicknesses 3, 4, 5, and 6 mm. Collectors
were constructed by using Pterocarpus timber (Mninga)
of thickness 2 inch and black painted marine plywood as
absorbing materials. Additionally, specifications of collectors
were collector length to width ratio equal to 2 (length 1.2 m
and width 0.6 m) and depth of 0.15 m. Both collectors were
oriented to northsouth direction and tilted to an angle of 10
50
Temperature ( C)
Since, it is difficult to define the collector average temperature in (4). It is convenient to define a quantity that relates
the actual useful energy gain of a collector to the useful gain if
the whole collector surface were at the fluid inlet temperature
[18]. This quantity is known as the collector heat removal
factor ( ) and is expressed by
55
45
40
35
30
25
20
6:00
8:00
Collector-1
Collector-2
Collector-3
10:00
12:00
14:00
Time (hour)
16:00
18:00
Collector-4
Ambient
Figure 2: Temperature profile of collector with similar glazing
thickness.
with the ground toward north direction as shown in Figure 1.
Collectors outlet temperatures were measured by using XR5SE data logger connected with PT940 temperature sensors,
whilst ambient temperatures were recorded by CEM DT-172
temperature and humidity data logger. On the other hand,
solar intensity and air flow rate were, respectively, measured
by using PCE-SPM solar radiation meter and Testo 425 Hot
Wire Thermal Anemometer. Air flow rate in each collector
was controlled by extract fans of capacity 1.27 m3 /min.
Efficiency of the collectors was established by testing
each collector with the same glass thickness (5 mm). The
duration for this experiment was 5 days each for collector
with similar glazing and with different glazing. Time of
experiments was from 7:30 to 6:00 p.m. with an interval of
data sampling of 10 minutes. Experiments were conducted at
the University of Dar es Salaam at the College of engineering
and Technology. Both collector models were placed on top of
block Q building situated at the Department of Chemical and
Mining Engineering.
Journal of Energy
Table 1: ANOVA for collector with similar glass thicknesses.
Sum of squares
1.427
4.428
5.854
350
55
300
50
250
45
200
150
100
1.289
Mean square
0.476
0.369
Temperature ( C)
Energy rate (J/s)
Between groups
Within groups
Total
df
3
12
15
Sig.
0.323
40
35
30
50
25
0
6:00
8:00
10:00
12:00
14:00
Time (hour)
Collector 1
Collector 2
16:00
18:00
Collector 3
Collector 4
Figure 3: Energy profile of collector with similar glazing thickness.
20
6:00
8:00
10:00
12:00
14:00
16:00
18:00
Time (24 hrs)
Glass, 3 mm
Glass, 4 mm
Glass, 5 mm
Glass, 6 mm
Ambient
Figure 4: Temperature profiles of collector with different glass
thicknesses on 17/10/2011.
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Collector with the Same Glass Thickness. The main objective of this experiment was to find out if there is significance
performances difference between designed collector models
with similar characteristics. Each collector model was tested
for its performance by using 5 mm glass thickness.
4.1.1. Temperature and Energy Profile of Collectors with Same
Glass Thickness. Figure 2 shows the variation of ambient and
outlet temperature of four collector models recorded from
7:30 a.m. to 06:00 p.m. on September 12, 2011, while Figure 3
shows the rate of flow of energy.
From Figure 2, it can be seen that there is no variation in
temperature between collectors; however, temperature varies
according to the fluctuation of solar intensity. Fluctuations of
temperature during the morning are high when compared
to afternoon due to high clouds coverage which results in
low solar intensity reaching the earth. Similar characteristics
were observed in energy profile in Figure 3. The efficiencies of
the solar collectors were evaluated by finding the area under
energy curve. Statistical analysis of the thermal efficiency of
solar air collectors with the same thickness glazing materials
was analysed with SPSS program with confidence interval
of 95%. Efficiency means of collector models 1, 2, 3, and 4
were 29.6%, 29.8%, 30.3%, and 30.3%, respectively. A one-way
between-subjects ANOVA (analysis of variance) was used to
compare the efficiencies of the collector models and reported
in Table 1. The main objective was to determine if there is a
significance difference between collectors efficiencies when
operated with the same glazing materials.
From Table 1, the significance value is 0.323 ( < 0.05).
Therefore; it can be concluded that there were no statistically significant differences between the means of collector
efficiency with the same glass thickness and that their minor
variations were due to changes in environmental conditions
and not due to design variations.
4.2. Collectors with the Different Glass Thicknesses
4.2.1. Temperature and Energy Profile of Collectors with Different Glass Thicknesses. Figure 4 shows temperature profiles
trends of ambient and outlet temperature for four collector
models recorded from 7:30 a.m. to 06:00 p.m. on 5/10/2011. It
can be seen that, during sun rise to noon, there were high
temperature fluctuations mostly due to variations in solar
intensity and these fluxes appear to be steady from noon to
sunset. On other hand, solar collector delivers low temperature from morning to noon session, while solar intensity was
high as a consequence of low angle of incidence on collector
surfaces (Figure 5). Das and Chakraverty [34] reported the
decrease in solar transmittance to the surface of the glass
to be significance for angle between 0 and 60 . Similar
characteristics also can be observed during afternoon session.
Journal of Energy
Table 2: Statistical analysis of performance of solar collectors with different glass thicknesses by using SPSS program.
Standard
deviation
Standard
error
95% confidence interval for mean
Lower bound
Upper bound
Mean
Glass, 3 mm
Glass, 4 mm
Glass, 5 mm
Glass, 6 mm
5
5
5
5
32.7400
35.4000
30.4400
27.8000
3.63015
4.07001
2.40583
2.43002
1.62345
1.82016
1.07592
1.08674
28.2326
30.3464
27.4528
24.7827
Total
Model
Fixed effects
Random effects
20
31.5950
4.12546
0.92248
3.21854
0.71969
1.62083
Minimum
Maximum
37.2474
40.4536
33.4272
30.8173
26.50
28.50
27.30
24.40
35.80
38.60
33.70
31.20
29.6642
33.5258
24.40
38.60
30.0693
26.4368
33.1207
36.7532
1600
450
1400
400
350
1200
Collector energy (J/s)
Solar intensity (W/m2 )
Glass
1000
800
600
400
300
250
200
150
100
50
200
0
6:00
0
6:00
8:00
10:00
12:00
14:00
Time (hour)
16:00
8:00
10:00
17/10/2011
18/10/2011
Figure 5: Solar intensity on 17/10/2011 and 18/10/2011.
Maximum temperature in both collectors occurred
around noon when solar radiations were perpendicular to
the collector surfaces. With single orientation of flat plate
solar collector, the best performance occurs when the solar
radiations are perpendicular to the collector surfaces, for this
case at around noon.
Figure 6 shows energy profiles; the energy profiles varied
with fluctuation of solar intensity and were increased with
increasing solar intensity. Low energy during the morning
and during the evening was caused by poor angle of solar
intensity incidence on collector surface. In addition, slight
fluctuations in energy profile during the afternoon were due
to poor thermal heat storage behaviour of marine board.
The collector efficiency was evaluated by finding the area
under the energy profiles curve and statistically tested for
their difference. The results of the statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) for collectors with different glass thickness
were carried out to study the significance differences between
their individual means and are reported in Table 2.
12:00
14:00
16:00
18:00
Time (24 hrs)
18:00
Glass, 3 mm
Glass, 4 mm
Glass, 5 mm
Glass, 6 mm
Figure 6: Energy profile of collectors with different glass thickness
on October 17, 2011.
The highest thermal efficiency as analysed by SPSS
program was 35.4% in collector with 4 mm glass thickness,
while the minimum performance was 27.8% in collector
with 6 mm glass thickness. Collectors with 3 mm and 5 mm
glass thicknesses were 32.7% and 30.4%, respectively. In
the same way, a one-way between-subjects ANOVA was
used to compare the effect of varying the thickness of glass
materials on efficiency of collectors with 3, 4, 5, and 6 mm
glass thicknesses. This was done to ascertain if the difference
between collectors means were significant.
From Table 3, it can be seen that significance value is =
0.012. Therefore, it could statistically be concluded that there
were significant differences between the means of collector
efficiency with different glass thicknesses. Thus, in order to
identify which thickness of glass gave significant difference,
a post hoc test for multiple comparisons of the collector
efficiencies was conducted. Since there were two possibility
tests to occur: equal variances assumed or equal variances not
assumed, Levene test for homogeneity of variance was used to
decide the method to use (see Table 4).
Journal of Energy
Table 3: ANOVA for collectors with different glass thicknesses.
Sum of squares
157.625
165.744
323.369
Between groups
Within groups
Total
df
3
16
19
Table 4: Results for Levene test for homogeneity of variance.
Levene statistic
0.462
df1
3
df2
16
Significance
0.713
36
Mean efficiency (%)
34
32
30
28
26
Glass thickness (mm)
Figure 7: Means plot of performances of solar collectors with
different glass thicknesses.
Since, from Table 3, > 0.05, equal variances assumed
(Tukey HSD) test was used.
Table 5 shows equal variances assumed (Tukey HSD) for
multiple comparisons of the collector efficiencies. The multiple comparison test shows that collector with glass thickness
4 mm had statistically performed differently from collectors
with glass thickness of 6 mm ( < 0.05). Therefore, it can
be concluded that, using glass thickness of 4 mm, thickness
improves the performance of the flat plate solar collector by
7.6% as compared to 6 mm glass thickness. The effect of the
glass thickness can clearly be depicted in Figure 7, whereby
collector with 6 mm thickness gave poor performance, while
4 mm thickness gave the best performance. Khoukhi et al.
[27] reported that, on increasing the thickness of the glass
cover from 3 mm to 6 mm, the steady heat flux through
the cover decreases and, therefore, thinner glass (3 mm) is
more suitable with regard to the cost and the weight of the
solar collector system when compared to 6 mm thickness.
These results also support the conclusion given by Vejen et
al. [29] who outlines good selection of glazing materials as
one of the factors that can improve the performance of solar
collector. The study shows that performance of collector can
be improved by 6% or more when thick and thin glasses are
compared.
Mean square
52.542
10.359
5.072
Significance
0.012
Thermal properties of glass cover such as transmittance,
reflectance, and absorptance are functions of collector performance. Therefore, the choice of collector glazing material should focus on increasing transmittance and reducing reflectance and absorbance. Generally, when increasing
glass thickness, transmittance and convective losses decrease,
while reflectance increases and vice versa. From this study,
it can be concluded that 3 mm glass thickness gives high
transmittance (low reflectance) and high convective losses
and hence is worse performance compared to 4 mm. The
5 mm and 6 mm glass thicknesses gave low transmittance
(high reflectance) and low convective losses and therefore
gave poor performances compared to 4 mm glass thickness.
Therefore, 4 mm glass thickness gave optimal transmittance
and convective losses, and hence is the best glazing thickness
for flat plate solar collector.
5. Conclusion
The solar collector models with different glazing thicknesses
had been successfully designed, constructed, and tested in
this study. The experimental data were compared graphically
by using excel program and their performances were analysed
statistically by using SPSS programme. From the results
obtained, it could be concluded that the use of 4 mm glass
thick improves the performance of air solar collector by 7.6%
compared to 3, 5, and 6 mm glass thicknesses. However, the
risk for glass breakage during construction is high when using
thinner glass, 4 mm compared to 5 mm and 6 mm, especially
when constructing larger collector with longer/wider span.
Therefore, optimization of efficiency and runability owe to be
made on whether to use 4 mm glass thickness with precaution
to avoid extra cost due to glass breakage.
Nomenclature
:
:
:
:
I:
:
in :
:
:
:
:
Collector area (m2 )
Collector heat removal factor
Specific heat capacity of air (J/KgK)
Mass flow rate (kg/s)
Global solar intensity reaching collector
surface (W/m2 )
Useful energy gained by air (J/KgK)
Available solar energy on collector surface
(J/KgK)
Temperature out of collector ( C)
Air inlet temperature ( C)
Heat loss coefficient (W/m2 K)
Absorptivity
Journal of Energy
7
Table 5: Multiple comparisons test for collector mean efficiencies.
(I) Glass
Glass, 3 mm
Glass, 4 mm
Glass, 5 mm
Glass, 6 mm
(J) Glass
Mean difference (I J)
Standard error
Significance
Glass, 4 mm
Glass, 5 mm
Glass, 6 mm
Glass, 3 mm
Glass, 5 mm
Glass,6 mm
Glass,3 mm
Glass,4 mm
Glass, 6 mm
Glass, 3 mm
Glass, 4 mm
Glass, 5 mm
2.66000
2.30000
4.94000
2.66000
4.96000
7.60000
2.30000
4.96000
2.64000
4.94000
7.60000
2.64000
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
2.03558
0.572
0.677
0.112
0.572
0.110
0.009
0.677
0.110
0.578
0.112
0.009
0.578
95% confidence interval
Lower bound
Upper bound
8.4838
3.1638
3.5238
8.1238
0.8838
10.7638
3.1638
8.4838
0.8638
10.7838
1.7762
13.4238
8.1238
3.5238
10.7838
0.8638
3.1838
8.4638
10.7638
0.8838
13.4238
1.7762
8.4638
3.1838
The mean difference is significant at the 0.05 level.
:
Transmissivity
:
Collector efficiency
, : Radiative heat transfer coefficient between
glass and absorber plate (W/m2 K)
, : Radiative heat transfer coefficient between
glass and ambient (W/m2 K)
: Emittance of glass
: Emittance of plate
: Glass temperature (K)
: Absorber plate temperature (K)
: Wind speed (m/s).
Conflict of Interests
The authors declare that there is no conflict of interests
regarding the publication of this paper.
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support from
the Sida-UDSM-Food Security Programme Research Funds
which is part of the Sida-UDSM Cooperation Programme for
the period of 2009 to 2013.
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