Energetic and exergetic study of a flat plate collector based solar water heater - investigation of the absorber size

Small sized absorber in a flat plate solar collector is beneficial in terms of cost and minimum heat losses. However, its detailed thermal performance compared to standard size collector is still not fully understood. There is a paucity of research to appreciate thermal performance of solar water heating collector with consideration of a small absorber size (below 1m2) and a standard absorber size (2 m2).  The present study attempts to investigate the energy and exergy efficiencies of flat plate solar water heating collector with two absorber plate areas (2 m2 and 0.74 m2) to enumerate size of the absorber required for improved first and second law thermal efficiencies of the collector. The efficiencies of these two collector designs are experimentally compared with the help of a test facility available in the site for given operating temperatures and rate of flow. The combined experimental uncertainty due to the measuring instruments and the measured parameters is also ascertained. The obtained results highlight the significance of the larger absorber size (2m2) for higher thermal efficiency, and lower absorber size (0.74m2) for higher exergetic efficiency. The highest thermal efficiency obtained is 77.38% for larger absorber size, and the highest exergy efficiency of 13.21% is obtained for lower absorber size collector. It is demonstrated that larger and lower absorber size of the collector have higher thermal efficiency and higher exergy efficiency, respectively, than some of the published works.