Experimental study of an innovative glazed solar air collector tested in real conditions

Nowadays, the building sector has a great impact on the CO2 emissions worldwide being responsible for more than a third of energy consumptions. In order to reduce their impact on the environment it is mandatory to implement renewable energy sources (RES) to produce the so called “green energy”. One of the main disadvantages of the systems using RES is the discontinuity in operation and one of the most used RES is the solar radiation which is implemented worldwide and has a great potential to be successfully used. Among the solar systems, solar air collectors (SAC) are systems easy to implement and with low operating costs. For enhancing the overall efficiency of a SAC and to increase the number of hours of operation it is imperative to use thermal energy storage materials (TES). The aim of this paper is to experimentally analyse the implementation of latent heat storage materials (phase changing materials – PCM) in glazed solar air collectors and for this purpose two similar collectors were studied in real conditions. After several experimental analysis conducted we have observed that during the night the PCM slowly releases the energy embodied during the daytime and the rise in temperature is higher in 57% of the time in this case. Moreover the amplitude of outlet temperature variation is lower with 34% in case of using PCMs