BIOSOLAR.HU – Solar Air Heater – Test Report - 2010.

Beer Can Solar Air Heater

Test Report (short version)

Robert Bernath

April 2010

biosolar.hu

robert@biosolar.hu

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 BIOSOLAR.HU – Solar Air Heater – Test Report - 2010.

List of contents
Introduction - The idea behind the project .............................................................3
Building the Collector...........................................................................................4
Some pictures of the manufacturing process...........................................4
Materials used for this project...............................................................7
Dimensions, direction and location of the solar panel ..............................7

Experimental set-up and measurement procedure...................................................8

Conclusion........................................................................................................10
Daily Efficiency related to ambient temperature ....................................10
Comparing the winter-performance of three solar collector types.............11
Appendix..........................................................................................................12
MEASUREMENT.................................................................................................12
Radiative heat-loss............................................................................12
Overheating .....................................................................................12
Measuring the heat-loss.....................................................................14
Increasing the air flow........................................................................15
Stagnation........................................................................................15
Data - January 2010..........................................................................17
Data - February 2010.........................................................................18
Data - March 2010. ...........................................................................19
Data - April 2010. .............................................................................20

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 BIOSOLAR.HU – Solar Air Heater – Test Report - 2010.

Introduction - The idea behind the project

After so much conjecture and misleading data I wanted to clarify what the real performance
of a 'rock-solid' beer can solar air heater is.

What do I mean by 'rock-solid' solar collector? The answer is a solar panel that is well-built,
air-tight , and stable enough to mount on a wall or fastened to a tilted frame on a roof:
almost the gold standard in its category. I know that every home made solar collectors is in
some way unique, but if a builder abides by the rules, the product will not differ in
performance from others too much.

In line with the above aim, I decided to build and test a beer can solar air heater. Not only
is the solar panel itself important, but also the operating conditions.
If the conditions are optimal, and the solar panel is of outstanding quality, the experiment
will produce the upper limit achievable with such an air heater.

To achieve maximum performance, the following conditions should be guaranteed:

a. The room to be heated should have as low a temperature as possible. We will see that
keeping the collector's temperature low helps to reach a higher performance value. Large
south-facing windows could cause overheating, increasing critical heat loss.
Therefore I tried to choose a room with small windows to the south, and I switched off the
conventional heating system's radiators. The average room temperature was 18.4 Celsius
during the 100 days of the test period.

b. The air flow entering the room should be increased to the bearable maximum. The
passing air cools the absorber, thus keeping its efficiency high.

c. The solar panel should face southwards, tilting at an angle of 60 degrees to the horizontal
plane. This orientation gives the maximum gain in our geographical location.

With the three above criteria the gain of the panel should be near to the maximum that can
be expected from this type of solar air heater. If someone is planning a new installation,
this is the value that can be used to calculate with.

The measured data from 1 January 2010 to 18 April 2010. (half the heating season) is
published on the biosolar.hu website ( http://biosolar.hu/gallery/14 ).

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Building the Collector

I collected all the available information regarding this type of solar air-collector, then bought
the best materials that were recommended.

Then I accepted an attractive and irresistible offer from the Hungarian Beer Can Solar
Heater Builder's Community. They needed a place to build a beer can collector that would
be featured on a Hungarian TV channel. The special report was broadcast (it was very
popular), and I got to keep the solar collector that was built by the community's enthusiastic
specialistic experts.

The video can be seen here:

http://tv2.hu/naplo/video/nap-lopok-avagy-ha-mar-megittuk-a-sort

Some pictures of the manufacturing process

Picture 1: The cross-wire holds Picture 2: Beer can and

the temperature sensor in the the manifold
inlet and outlet

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Picture 3: Tool for cutting the Picture 4: Connecting cans form

cans and removing burrs the ducts

Picture 5: Ducts formed

from cans glued into the Picture 6: Painting the absorber with
manifolds with heat- selective solar coating
resistant adhesive

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Picture 8: Thermal insulation and Picture 7: Air inlet, filter, fan

heat mirror in the fibreglass box and controller in the room

Picture 9: Rear face of the

collector, air ducts and Picture 10: Solar panel in its final
breakthrough points position on the roof

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Materials used for this project

• absorber : aluminium beer cans, wall thickness = 0.14mm

• manifolds (2 pcs): aluminium 860x200mm
• absorber surface treatment : two layers of SOLKOTE selective solar coating
• housing : fibreglass box with 30x30mm U-profile steel bracing
• transparent cover : 4mm thick polycarbonate with anti-UV coating
• thermal insulation : 5cm thick ROCKWOOL Multrirock
• heat mirror : 0.1 mm thick aluminium
• fan : radial type

Dimensions, direction and location of the solar panel

Picture 11: Dimensions

Dimensions
Gross dimensions: 2.03m x 1.04m = 2.11m2
Net dimensions: 0.86m x 1.85m = 1.6m2
Diameter of the air inlet and outlet = 125mm

Orientation
Direction :facing 0 degrees south
Tilt angle: 60 degrees to horizontal
Installed on tiled roof, no shading

Location
GPS coordinates
N 47 30'33.62''
E 18 55'14.63''
Altitude: 227m
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Experimental set-up and measurement procedure

Picture 12: Experimental setup

Sensors:
Tout [°C] - temperature of air exiting the collector
Tin [°C] - temperature of air entering the collector
Tair [°C] - temperature of ambient air
Tbox, [°C] - temperature inside the collector
Troom [°C] - temperature of the heated room
Tenter [°C] - temperature of air entering the room
Texit [°C] - temperature of air exiting the collector
I [W/m2] – global irradiation perpendicular to the collector (pyranometer)
H [RH%] – relative humidity of the ambient air
P [hPa] – pressure of the ambient air
M [kg/s] – air flow (computed from differential pressure)
Efan [Wh] – consumption of the fan
Eheat [Wh] – consumption of the electric heater

The collected data was stored every minute throughout each day from sunrise to sunset. We
did not need more frequent sampling, due to the slow thermal processes.
The PC-based data-logger and controller performed data-filtering, conditioning and post-
processing. The real-time calculations provided instant, derived and complex quantities,
ready to display to control functions.

Spreadsheets and graphs contain data in the following time-contexts:

– real-time data

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– daily data
– weekly data
– monthly data

Real-time data gives information which is completely different from the filtered and
processed data. Real-time data is unsuitable for calculating the collector's gain, or the
efficiency of this technique.

The thermal efficiency is calculated on different time bases:

1. Momentary Efficiency
This value (represented by a red curve on the daily graphs) shows the momentary
percentage of the thermal energy output of the panel that is gained from the solar
irradiation perpendicular to the collector's aperture (in January typically 40% of
Momentary Efficiency can be measured).
With rapidly changing cloud cover, Momentary Efficiency cannot be measured
because of thermal inertia: it can be measured in stable conditions.
2. Daly Efficiency
The daily heat-gain of the solar panel compared to the total daily irradiation
perpendicular to aperture (from sunrise to sunset)
3. Weekly Efficiency
The weekly heat-gain of the solar panel compared to the total weekly irradiation
perpendicular to aperture (from Monday to Sunday)
4. Monthly Efficiency
The monthly heat-gain of the solar panel compared to the total monthly irradiation
perpendicular to aperture (from the first day of the month to the last)

Knowing the value of Momentary Efficiency can help improve the solar collector, while the
Daly Efficiency shows how much energy we can expect from such a box. The latter is
important when calculating the collector's gain.

A typical mistake
A student studying environmental sciences, using incorrect performance data of 70%
( published on the Air-heater Builder's forum ), wrote an even worse conclusion in his thesis:
If the performance of the collector is 70% and the overall solar radiation is Q kWh/m2 in the
winter, then the gain of the collector should be 0.7xQ kWh/m2. He also based his
calculations on the payback period on this incorrect data.

Note: After the 100-day of measurement period, I can say, that the maximum performance
during the heating season is around 30%.

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Conclusion

Daily Efficiency related to ambient temperature

During the test period the global radiation and the heat gain of the solar collector and the
ambient temperature were measured from sunrise to sunset, among other parameters.
The efficiency - calculated from the global radiation and the heat-gain - and the daytime
average ambient temperature (Td_air) are illustrated on the following graph. The linear
regression equation shows efficiency of the collector related to the outside air temperature:

Daily Performance [%] = 29.5 + 0.73 x Td_air

Picture 13: Temperature dependence of Daily Efficiency

The daily performance of the south-facing tilted (at 60 degrees to the horizontal) beer can
solar air heater can be calculated with this equation. Of course, if the sunlight level is below
the minimum that triggers operation, then the performance will be zero.

Daily Efficiency at ambient air temperature of 0 °C is 30%

Daily Efficiency at ambient air temperature of 15 °C is 45%

The calculated performance will not match daily data exactly (see spreadsheets in the
appendix), because the approximation is based on long-term statistics.

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Comparing the winter-performance of three solar collector types

Two Hungarian owners of solar heater systems (one with flat-plate system and the other
with evacuated tubes) regularly publish the quantity of heat produced by their systems.
I normalized the gain data to 1 m2 in order to display it on a single graph. The time axis
starts on 1 January, and the three curves represent the daily gain of the air, flat-plate, and
evacuated tube collectors.
The two number in the parentheses represent the gross and net areas of the solar collectors
(gross m2 / net m2 )

Data series:
Sun's irradiation (1/1)
Evacuated Tube (19/9.6)
Flat Plate (8/7.2)
Air Collector (2/1.6)

I know that there is a distance about

200 kilometres between the systems,
and therefore the solar irradiation is
slightly different, but the difference
should not cause significant deviation
from the theoretical value.

Let us say that the same solar

irradiation hit every square metre of all
collectors during the test period
(disregarding daily deviations). The
graphs are very instructive, telling us
that the home made beer can air
heater supplied nearly the same
amount of heat as the most expensive
system, equipped with evacuated
tubes.

The graphs are only for half of one

winter, but it is highly likely that the
previous three months would show the
same tendency.

For the rest of the year the

performance of the air heater is zero,
because the house does not need
heating, and the fan is switched off.

Note: Consider the above carefully if

you are planning solar-assisted heating
in your home.
Picture 14: Comparing the winter
performance of three collector types

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Appendix

MEASUREMENT
1 January – April 18 2010

Radiative heat-loss

08 January 2010

Last night started clear, then became cloudy.

In the clear-sky condition the temperature in the collector fell by 4 degrees below the
ambient temperature, due to radiative heat loss.
After 1 o'clock the sky became cloudy and the temperature difference vanished. The clouds
blocked the heat radiating from the collector, and therefore the absorber warmed up to the
outside air temperature.

Picture 15: Phenomenon of radiative heat loss

We can make some calculations based on this phenomenon:

In the equilibrium state, the heat leaving the absorber via radiation per unit time (P_rad)
equals the heat convection from the surroundings.

P_rad = U x dT [W/m2]
where: U = heat transfer coefficient, dT = temperature difference

hence U = 6 W/m2K, dT = 4 K
P_rad = 24 W/m2

In clear-sky daytime conditions the radiative heat loss might be multiple of this value,
because the absorber is usually much warmer (around 40 °C), and the heat loss is
proportional to its absolute temperature raised to the power of fourth.

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Overheating

02 February 2010.

Yesterday it was extremely sunny. Let us look the daily graph.

Picture 16: Daily graph

It has been mentioned that the lack of efficient heat storage in air heating systems can
cause overheating of rooms.
Commercial air heaters are usually equipped with a thermostat that switches the fan off to
prevent the family being grilled. Switching air circulation off represents a critical loss in
winter (when sunshine is a scarce commodity).

Fortunately I am heating a large room with outer walls that have a cooling effect. Therefore
I experienced no overheating in the 100 days of the test period with my 2 m2 solar panel.
I should mention that the main heating system's radiators were switched off in the room.

This does not mean that the fan should be switched off in all rooms kept at comfort
temperature, It is just that overheating may happen during the sunniest hours. If this
happens, heat loss will occur.

The graph on Figure 17 shows the temperature in the mansard roof, one day in late April.

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Picture 17: Temperature on two sunny days in the

heated room

Measuring the heat-loss

20 February 2010.

This experiment was performed to measure the panel's heat loss.

After sunset I blew warm air - heated in an insulated duct - into the collector.

The heater was an electric heater, that warmed up the air from temperature Tr to Te. I
measured the performance of the heater, Tr, Te and the temperature at the collector's air
inlet (Ti) and outlet (To) . The outside temperature was typical for winter, and the warm
air was around the operating temperature of 25 degrees Celsius.

Thus the air-flow volume was the same along the ducts and the collector, and the ratio of
cooling and warming shows the efficiency loss, due to heat loss:

(Ti-To) / (Te-Tr)

The heater warmed the air from room temperature by 23.13 °C, and the air cooled by 5.54
°C in the collector.
5,54/23.13=0.24, which means 24% loss over the absorber surface of 1.6m2. For 1 m2 it
gives 24/1.6=15% .

What is the above result good for?

Let us assume that the optical efficiency of the collector's glazing and the absorber is 60%.
If 15% of the 60% of solar radiation being converted into heat on the selective absorber is
lost, this degrades the collector's efficiency to 0.6*0.85= 51%.

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At the time of the measurement the ambient temperature was 6.5 °C. The temperature
difference between the collector and the surroundings was less than in a usual working
situation. In winter a 0 °C ambient temperature and a 30 °C collector temperature are
typical (dT=30 °C), and at this time dT=20 °C. The heat-loss is proportional to the
temperature difference. At operating temperature the heat loss increases to
15 x 30 / 20 = 22.5%, so the efficiency of the collector is 0.6 x (1-0.225) = 47%.

This was only an approximation...

Increasing the air flow

26 March 2010

It is spring. The outside temperature is rising.

Today I increased the air flow rate from 2.4 m/s to 2.7 m/s. The more air that passes
through the collector, the lower temperature measured on the absorber. This change in the
air flow rate should increase the efficiency slightly.

The air flow was increased by removing the air filter. (The filter was clean, no dust inside.)

Stagnation

01 April 2010

After three months' continuous operation we experienced our first electric outage.

This graph shows some parameters when the system was restarting.

Picture 18: Stagnation

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The temperature in the collector's manifold was 90 °C at a solar irradiation of 900W/m2.

In stagnation state:
Tk – outside temperature = 20 °C
Tx – temperature in the collector
U – heat loss coefficient = 6 W/m2K
I – solar irradiation = 900 W/m2
n0 – optical efficiency of the panel

If we discount radiative heat loss in the stagnation state, the heat loss keeps in balance with
the heat from the solar radiation reaching the absorber:

(Tx-Tk) x U = I x n0
Tx = I/U + Tk

Tx = 0.9x900/6+20=155 °C

Of course, at such a high temperature the radiative heat loss should be taken into account,
and this could be the explanation for the lower temperature measured ( 90 °C ).

Note: At around 100 Celsius the polycarbonate cover may get seriously damaged.

Data

The measured data from 1 January 2010 to 18 April 2010. (half the heating season) is
published on the biosolar.hu website ( http://biosolar.hu/gallery/14 ).

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