An improved procedure for the experimental characterization of optical efficiency in evacuated tube solar collectors

The standard EN 12975-2 provides guidelines for testing solar collectors both in stationary and quasi-dynamic conditions. The second test method allows the optical efficiency of flat-plate collectors and even evacuated tube collectors to be determined by applying the extended multiple linear regression. However, in the case of tubular shape collectors, the available procedure requires a large number of data, above all for the determination of the transversal incidence angle modifier, which is the parameter describing the optical response of the absorber tube to the direct beam on the plane normal to the tube axis. Here, an improved procedure to determine the transversal incidence angle modifier is presented and validated against experimental data. For this purpose, efficiency tests in quasi-dynamic conditions have been performed following the standard EN 12975-2 on a U-tube evacuated tubular collector, using a cylindrical absorber, both with and without external CPC (compound parabolic concentrator) reflectors. The validation has been performed by comparing the efficiency curve and the curve of incidence angle modifier to the ones that are obtained by means of other available methods. The main advantages of the present new procedure are the followings: it provides a continuous curve of the incidence angle modifier and it does not require to subdivide the incidence angle range in many intervals. Therefore, it does not require a minimum number of data points for each data subset and thus it is less demanding in terms of required number of tests. © 2011 Elsevier Ltd.