Performance of a two-phase closed thermosyphon solar collector with a shell and tube heat exchanger

In the present study, a two-phase closed thermosyphon flat-plate solar collector with a shell and tube heat exchanger was investigated experimentally under the field conditions of Cairo, Egypt. The collector was designed, constructed, and tested at transient conditions to study its performance for different cooling water mass flow rates at different inlet cooling water temperatures. Also the effect of the number of the thermosyphon tubes on the performance of the collector was investigated. Under different climate conditions, the experimental results showed that the optimal mass flow rate is very close to the ASHRAE standard mass flow rate for testing conventional flat-plate solar collectors. Also, the experimental results indicated that the number of the thermosyphon tubes has a significant effect on the collector efficiency. The performance of the present collector with optimum number of thermosyphon tubes was compared with the performance of two-phase closed thermosyphon flat-plate solar collectors with tube in tube heat exchangers of previous investigators and a better performance for the present collector was obtained at high inlet water temperature.