Performance Improvements by Introducing Solar Pump in Flat Plate Collector – Experimental Study

The kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is recognized for it is huge solar resources, where the average annual solar radiation about 2200 kWh/m 2 .With the increase of global awareness on the negative impacts of burning fossil fuels, the kingdom has placed an ambitious plan on utilizing solar energy.The implementation of flat plate collectors (FPC) for water heating would decrease the domestic electric consumption.In this work, an enhancement of a FPC performance by introducing of solar pump was investigated, where, a passive locally fabricated FPC system was modified by introducing of small size solar water pump.The original FPC was characterized at the beginning, then an experimental investigation was conducted on the modified system.The performance of modified system was collected and compared with the original system based on the measurement of achieved water tank temperature, plate temperature, removal factor and system's efficiency for different operating condition and different tilt angles.For the same operating period, and for a tilt angle of 21, 26 and 31, the maximum achievable tank temperature for modified system were found to be 57, 59 and 60, respectively.The collected tank temperatures were increased by 12, 19 and 13 for tilt angle of 21, 26 and 31, respectively.In addition, as compared with the original system, the maximum achievable efficiency for the modified FPC system was found to be improved by 6%, 7% and 10% for tilt angle of 21, 26 and 31, respectively.