DESIGN, CONSTRUCTION, PERFORMANCE EVALUATION AND ECONOMIC-ANALYSIS OFAN INTEGRATED COLLECTOR STORAGE-SYSTEM

The design and construction of an Integrated Collector Storage (ICS) s ystem is presented in this paper. The main advantage that such a colle ctor system presents, with respect to conventional flat-plate collecto rs, is the fact that it is of a very low profile. The main disadvantag e of these collectors comes from the design of the system, i.e. with t he receiver of the collector being also the storage vessel, it is not possible to insulate it properly and there are significant heat losses during the night. System modelling and optimisation is carried out by the use of a computer code written for the purpose. Performance resul ts presented are in good agreement with the predicted results, especia lly for the end-of-day storage temperature which is predicted to withi n 5.1 %. The initial cost of the system presented here is 13 % cheaper than the corresponding flat-plate (FP) collector of the same aperture area and storage volume. Additionally, the economic analysis of the t wo systems, performed with the F-Chart program, showed a yearly F-valu e of 0.85 for the ICS system compared to 0.83 for the FP system, a pay -back period of nine years for the ICS system, compared to 11 years fo r the FP system and a life cycle saving of C pound 330 for the ICS sys tem compared to C pound 201 for the FP system. (C) 1997 Elsevier Scien ce Ltd.