COMPUTATIONAL EVALUATION OF SOLAR HEATING-SYSTEMS USING CONCRETE SOLAR COLLECTORS

This paper uses the F-chart technique to evaluate three types of solar heating systems, namely; space solar heating and domestic hot water s ystem (SHDHW), domestic hot water system (DHW) and solar swimming pool heating system (SPHS), using three types of concrete solar collectors , models A, B, and C, and one conventional metallic solar collector. T he economical analysis of SHDHW system revealed that the concrete coll ectors provided about 49 and 63% of the annual load when the collectin g area of the solar panel increased from 55 to 88 m(2) (25 to 40% of t he building roof area). The corresponding solar contributions when con ventional metallic collectors were used are 41 and 53%, respectively. This represents an improvement of the annual solar fraction of about 1 9% when concrete collectors are used instead of the metallic collector s. It was found that solar heating systems with concrete solar collect or models gave higher solar fractions and total life cycle savings tha n the conventional solar metallic collector.