TY - JOUR
TI - Efficiency of liquid flat-plate solar energy collector with solar tracking system
AU - Chekerovska Marija
AU - Filkoski Risto V
JN - Thermal Science
PY - 2015
VL - 19
IS - 5
SP - 1673
EP - 1684
PT - Article
AB - An extensive testing programme is performed on a solar collector experimental  set-up, installed on a location in Shtip (Republic of Macedonia), latitude  41º 45’ and longitude 22º 12’, in order to investigate the effect of the sun  tracking system implementation on the collector efficiency. The set-up  consists of two flat plate solar collectors, one with a fixed surface tilted  at 30о towards the South, and the other one equipped with dual-axis rotation  system. The study includes development of a 3-D mathematical model of the  collectors system and a numerical simulation programme, based on the  computational fluid dynamics (CFD) approach. The main aim of the mathematical  modelling is to provide information on conduction, convection and radiation  heat transfer, so as to simulate the heat transfer performances and the  energy capture capabilities of the fixed and moving collectors in various  operating modes. The feasibility of the proposed method was confirmed by  experimental verification, showing significant increase of the daily energy  capture by the moving collector, compared to the immobile collector unit. The  comparative analysis demonstrates a good agreement between the experimental  and numerically predicted results at different running conditions, which is a  proof that the presented CFD modelling approach can be used for further  investigations of different solar collectors configurations and flow schemes.