Experimentation of a Solar Water Heater with Integrated Storage Tank

An integrated collector storage (ICS) solar water heater was constructed in 2004 and studied its optical and thermal performance. It was revealed that it has some thermal shortcomings of thermal performances. The ICS system consists of one cylindrical horizontal tank properly mounted in a stationary symmetrical Compound Parabolic Concentrating (CPC) reflector trough. The main objective was to delimit the causes of these deficiencies and trying to diagnose them. A rigorous experimentation of the solar water heater has been done over its daily energetic output as well as the evolution of the nocturnal thermal losses. In fact, three successive days, including nights, of operation have permitted to obtain diagrams describing the variations of mean temperature in the tank and the thermal loss coefficient during night of our installation. The experimental results, compared with those obtained by simulation, showed a perfecting of thermal performances of system which approach from those of other models introduced on the international market