Experimental Investigation of Solar Thermal Flat Plate Collector

Solar energy has always been an alluring option to meet the hot water demands worldwide. Though there are plenty of advantages associated with the use of solar energy as source to fetch hot water supplies, the intermittent, variable and unpredictable nature of solar energy are major obstacles on the way and makes the use of energy storage system for a solar water heating system (SWHS) indispensable. Thus lots of way have been developed over the past decades to store this energy and efficiently utilize it according to demand throughout the day. Experiment was carried out in two phases, in first phase experiment was conducted in the month of January, during this phase of experimentation the charging of PCM in the early morning hours is excluded from the analysis and main emphasis is imposed on the discharging of PCM at the evening hours. But after receiving some useful suggestions from the members of research and development committee of the institute, the second phase of experimentation was then conducted in the month of May, which includes both the charging and discharging effects of PCM in early morning and evening hours respectively.