Improvement of Solar Collector Performance and Increased Solar Energy Efficiency by Using Phase Change Materials

Solar collectors are among the most widely used equipment for solar energy storage, in which solar radiation energy is transferred to the internal energy of a transferring material, but this equipment can rarely fulfill thermal needs due to the solar time and energy requirement. Therefore, this paper proposes the use of phase change materials (PCM) in the collector to improve thermal storage and prevent energy loss. The main objective of this study is to investigate phase change materials (PCM) slurry fluid flow inside a solar plate and to evaluate its performance. In order to evaluate the performance of the solar collector with this fluid, a solar sheet containing phase change material is simulated in Comcast software. A numerical analysis conducted with Comsol Multiphysics Software is presented to obtain a preliminary evaluation of the performance of the proposed concept. The numerical results show that these materials can effectively improve solar collector performance.