Solar water heater using a secondary fluid

Abstract

The main concern of this project was to construct and test a solar water heater using a secondary fluid as the heat transfer medium between a flat plate solar collector and a hot-water storage tank. The heat transfer fluid used was motor oil (Talpa W20). The purpose of using oil was to eliminate corrosion of the solar collector. In this project, the construction of the flat plate collector was improved over the designs of previous University projects concerning solar water heaters. The major modification was the use of seam welding (instead of pop-rivets) in fixing the two sheets making up the collector. A plan of how to run a mass production line of stainless steel solar collector plates is presented in this project. The outlined plan is presented with various diagrams to illustrate the operations involved in the construction.