DETERMINATION OF MONTHLY OPTIMUM COLLECTOR AREA OF AN EMBEDDED ACTIVE SOLAR FLAT PLATE COLLECTOR WATER HEATER UNDER THE WEATHER CONDITION OF BAUCHI, NIGERIA
This research predicts the monthly and optimum collector surface areas for a compact or embedded solar flat plate collector water heater that will provide hot water at various temperatures for clinical applications with a storage capacities of 150 litres, 113 litres and 88 litres a day for laundry, post-natal and sterilization applications respectively for a medical centre for at least 10 patient capacity, assuming that, each patient requires 35 litres of water per day under the weather condition of Bauchi, Nigeria with latitude 10.23 0N and longitude 9.84 0E . Monthly average daily weather data and solar radiations obtained from the weather data processor (Type 109 component) of TRNSYS 16 software were used as input into program codes written in MATLAB to calculate the energy ratio (ER), and the optimum collector area embedded in each other. The results revealed that, month of August has the least energy ratios of 0.66, 1.34 and 0.92 with respective collector areas of 8.21 m2, 1.78 m2 and 8.57 m2 and the least collector areas of 2.35 m2, 0.82 m2 and 2.12 m2 found in the month of April for the three applications respectively. Therefore if the solar system is to meet all domestic hot water load of 150 litres, 113 litres and 88 litres set at 50 ℃ , 43 ℃ and 60 ℃ an annual average monthly collector area of 2.30 m2, 1.15 m2 and 2.1 m2 for laundry, post-natal and sterilization applications respectively is required and is adopted for the design. With these adopted areas, the system would be capable of meeting all year round design load for all the months except for the month of August where only a portion of the load would be met. To meet design load for this month an auxiliary energy must be provided
Authors : Duvuna, G.A., Soja, Y.J. and Zhigilla, Y.I.
Category : Open Access Volume (Issue) : 4(2) Date Uploaded : 19th April 2019