Performance Analysis of Double-Glazed Flat Plate Solar Collector with Cu-based Solar Thermal Absorber Surfaces

In this work, we experimentally investigated the solar absorption performance of Cu-based scalable nanostructured surfaces and compared their performance with the conventional TiNOX. We fabricated Cu-based nanostructured surfaces with a controlled chemical oxidation process applicable to a large area or complex geometry. We optimized the process parameters including the chemical compounds, dipping time and process temperature. We conducted both lab-scale and outdoor experiments to characterize the conversion efficiency of each absorber surfaces with single and double glazing setup. Lab-scale experiment was conducted with $50mm{\times}50mm$ absorber sample with 1-sun condition (1kW/m2) using a solar simulator (PEC-L01) with measuring the temperature at the absorber plate, cover glass, air gap and ambient. From the lab-scale experiment, we obtained ${\sim}91^{\circ}C$ and $94^{\circ}C$ for CuO and TiNOX surfaces after 1 hr of solar illumination at single glazing, respectively. To measure the absorber performance at actual operating condition, outdoor experiment was also conducted using $110mm{\times}110mm$ absorber sample. We measured the solar flux with thermopile detector (919P-040-50). From outdoor experiment, we observed ${\sim}123^{\circ}C$ and $131^{\circ}C$ for CuO and TiNOX with 0.6 kW/m2 insolation at double glazing, respectively. We showed that the suggested nanostructured CuO solar absorber has near-equivalent collection efficiency compared with the state-of-the-art TiNOX surfaces even with much simpler manufacturing process that does not require an expensive equipment.