14-10-2014, 02:53 PM
Abstracts: Availability of cheap and abundant supply of energy is an index of national prosperity. But, the conventional energy sources are finite, depleting fast and this fossil fuel-era is gradually coming to an end. So, with the heightening concerns of environmental issues, rapidly rise in fuel prices and continuous increase in energy demands as well as usages, it is important to develop renewable energy based technologies to meet the country’s future energy demands and to maintain the pace of development. Among renewable, solar is the most promising and reliable source. So, this inexhaustible energy source can be used for residential water heating. The evacuated tube solar collectors have better performance than other collectors for medium temperature applications by suppressing the convection and radiation heat losses due to vacuum enclosure and selective absorber surface coating in heat receiver in particular for higher temperature operations. For many potential applications where the temperatures of 40 to 90o C are needed, the experiences are rather limited and suitable water heaters are missing. Therefore, it is intended to develop high performance solar water heater for domestic / commercial applications using all glass evacuated tubes as collector heat receiving element. The objective of the present work is to development and test a modular prototype evacuated glass tube based solar water heater for medium temperature applications like in domestic houses, hotels, hospitals, hostels / dormitories or restaurants to replace the existing costly conventional energy based / fossil fuel fired systems which are being used to generate hot water for room heating, bathing, washing and food cooking etc. or some other similar utilities.