Experimental study of the performance of a 3-D stationary solar collector with flat plate collector

Solar collectors play key role in solar thermal systems and their efficiency has more effect in the system performance. The shape and geometry of solar collectors is an important factor to increase their efficiency. In this paper, two collectors, a 3-D stationary solar collector which is called solar conical collector and flat plate collector has been investigated. These two solar collectors have the same absorber area and designed and tested in the same conditions. The performance of solar collectors was experimentally studied by the use of ASHRAE standard. Experiments were performed with water as a working fluid in the south of Iran with deference outdoor conditions and the best data has been selected. The results show that the average of thermal efficiency of a solar 3-D collector is about 59% while this value was about 53% for flat plate collector. The performance of both collectors versus radiation, flow rate, temperature variation was studied and the experiments indicated that the efficiency of the 3-D conical collector has better than the flat plat collector.