Evaluation of a Locally Fabricated Cylindrical Solar Water Heater

The book is an expository result of a research carried out on an unusual locally fabricated cylindrical solar water heater. The aim is to design, fabricate and evaluate performances of the heater. The heater was made from cylindrical polycarbonate (plastic) material as glazing material and a spiral black painted copper tube as absorber. In the design, the ends of the cylindrical plastic were sealed with circular transparent polycarbonate material in order to increase the maximum possible solar radiation that will reach the black painted spiral copper tube. The choice of plastic material as the glazing material is to reduce the cost of solar water heater and to make it a veritable appliance for heating water.The uniqueness of the heater includes, easy fabrication, no tracking requirement and portability. It also requires reduced operational and maintenance complexities. And because the heater is supposed to generate hot water at all weather conditions, the lowest avarage monthly insolation was used in the design. In the analysis of the performance of the heater, the useful energy absorbed by the copper tube and copper tube length were estimated as 618.51W/m2 and 18.26m respectively.