A Study on the Development of Nonglass Solar Vacuum Tube Collector

Nature has been providing us energy from the beginning of the world. However human has hardly used it wisely. Solar energy is a kind of renewable energy from the nature. This study has been carried out to study the use of solar energy as it is harnessed in the form of thermal energy. Solar energy is one of the most promising energy resources such as hydrogen, biomass, wind and geothermal energy, because it is clean and inexhaustible. Space heating in buildings can be provided from solar energy by systems that are similar in many respects to water heater systems. By tapping into solar energy, we can not only solve the problem of energy shortage, but also can protect the environment and benefit the human beings. There are currently two types of evacuated tube; a single glass tube and a double glass tube. The former consists of a single glass tube which contains a flat or curved aluminium plate attached to a copper heat pipe or water flow pipe. The latter consists of rows of parallel transparent glass tubes, each of which contains an absorber tube. Evacuated tube collectors introduced above, however, pose some problems as they break rather easily under mechanical stresses. This paper introduces some preliminary results in design and fabrication of a non-glass solar vacuum tube collector in which the thermosyphon(heat pipe)made of copper is used as a heat transfer device. A series of tests have been performed to assess the ability of a non-glass solar vacuum tube collector. The series of experiments are as follows: 1)Vacuum level inside a vacuum tube. 2)Effects of the air remaining inside a vacuum tube on the temperature on the absorber plate. 3)Comparison of a non-glass vacuum solar collector with a single glass evacuated tube(SEIDO 5). Different vacuum levels inside non-glass vacuum tubes were applied to check any leakage or unexpected physical or chemical developments with time. The vacuum level changed from 10-2torr to 5torr in 5 days due to air infiltration from the ambient and gas emissions from the materials they were made of. The effect of vacuum levels inside a vacuum tube on the absorber plate were investigated in different conditions. Due to less heat losses to the ambient, the non-glass vacuum tube at vacuum level 10-2 torr kept more heat at higher temperatures compared to the non-glass vacuum tube collectors whose vacuum levels were at 5 torr. However, the temperature was not linearly proportional to the vacuum level. Two types of solar collectors were used to investigate the ability of non-glass solar vacuum tube: one single glass evacuated tube and one non-glass vacuum tubes(10-2torr). The efficiency of a non-glass vacuum tube with 10-2torr was different from that of a single glass evacuated tube in which vacuum level is 10-4∼10-5torr due to the transmittance of ZnO. Unlike glass evacuated tubes, non-glass solar vacuum tubes generally require some measures to prevent air infiltration through invisible pores of the tube wall and gas emission from the materials. If the problems related with vacuum inside a tube are solved, the non-glass vacuum collector will work more efficiently