Abstract
For a conventional natural-circulation type solar water heater, the pressure head is limited by the height between the storage tank and hot water tap. Therefore, it is difficult to provide sufficient hot water flow rate for general usage. This study deals with a design modification of the storage tank to utilize the tap-water pressure to increase hot-water supply Based on fluid dynamic and heat transfer theories, a series of modeling and simulation is conducted to achieve practical design requirements. An experimental setup is built and tested and the results are compared with theoretical simulation model. The storage tank capacity is 240 l and the outer diameter of piping was 15 mm. Number of tube turns tested are 5, 10, and 15. Starting with initial storage tank temperature of $80^{\circ}C$, the temperature variation of the supply hot water is investigated against time, while maintaining minimum flow rate of 10 1/min. Typical results show that the hot water supply of minimum $30^{\circ}C$ can be maintained for 34 min with tap-water supply pressure of 2.5 atm, The relative errors between modeling and experiments coincide well within 10% in most cases.
