Experimental and Theoretical Investigation of Flow Rate Effect on Dynamic and Efficiency of Asphalt Solar Collector in Real Operating Condition

The asphalt pavements are exposed to daily solar radiation; hence the asphalt pavements provide the remarkable potential to heat a working fluid such as water. Simple structure and ease of fabrication of asphalt solar collectors (ASCs) promise applicability and low-cost operation of this class of thermal collectors. The current experimental and theoretical investigation evaluates the performance, efficiency and dynamic of ASCs in real operating condition at Bam County, Kerman. In this research, to investigate the performance of ASCs, a 1.2m2 prototype was fabricated and its dynamics was monitored under 6 hours a day in two different flow rates of water. The results illustrate that increasing the flow rate of water to collector by 2 times improves the collector efficiency by 25%, while the difference in the inlet and outlet water temperatures decreases. Furthermore, by utilizing the experimental data, a theoretical approach was utilized to predict the performance of ASC in the other flow rates of water. The developed analytic approach has good consistency with the obtained experimental test. The analytic approach provides an effective method to estimate the performance of ASCs with appropriate accuracy, when the experimental results are unavailable.