Abstract—A solar assisted heat pump system uses solar
thermal energy as a heat source for evaporator in the heat pump
by applying solar collector. The COP (coefficient of
performance) of the heat pump can be increased when the
evaporating temperature increases. The efficiency of the solar
collector can be increased because it has lower operating
temperature compare to traditional solar collector. Thus, as a
part of these researches, a hybrid solar collector that has
fin-and-tube heat exchanger has been developed. This collector
is flat plat solar collector that can get thermal energy from
ambient air for heating the circulating water in the collector by
heat exchanging between the air and water side in fin-and-tube
heat exchanger. This heated water can be used as heat source of
the evaporator in the heat pump even if the solar energy is not
enough. So, in this study, an numerical analysis was conducted
for confirming the heat gain and pressure drop of water in the
collector when the solar energy was provided. As a result, lower
thermal efficiency and higher overall heat loss coefficient were
obtained when the air channel of the fin-and-tube heat
exchanger was opened. But, in case of the closed air channel
type, similar maximum thermal efficiency and slightly higher
overall heat loss coefficient was obtained. Thus, the significant
effect of open and close of the air channel on thermal efficiency
was confirmed, and the lower pressure drop of the water side
was confirmed with similar thermal efficiency on two row
distribution type tube compared to the traditional series type
tube. So, it is confirmed that the closed air channel with two row
distribution tube can be regarded as proper type.
Index Terms—Solar thermal energy, flat plate solar collector,
solar assisted heat pump, fin-and-tube heat exchanger.
H. U. Choi and R. Fatkhur are with Graduate School of Refrigeration and
Air-Conditioning Engineering, Pukyong National University, Busan, South
Korea (e-mail: nopoil@pukyong.ac.kr).
Y. B. Kim is with the Department of Mechanical System Engineering,
Pukyong National University, Busan, South Korea (e-mail:
kpjjwoo@pknu.ac.kr).
C. H. Son, J. I. Yoon, Y.B. Kim, and K. H. Choi are with Department of
Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineering, Pukyong National
University, Busan, South Korea (corresponding author: K. H. Choi; e-mail:
choikh@pknu.ac.kr).
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Cite:H. U. Choi, R. Fatkhur, C. H. Son, J. I. Yoon, Y. B. Kim, and K. H. Choi, "Numerical Analysis on Thermal Efficiency of Hybrid Solar Collector with Fin-and-Tube Heat Exchanger," Journal of Clean Energy Technologies vol. 6, no. 3, pp. 223-226, 2018.
