Journal of the Korean Solar Energy Society ISSN:1598-6411(Print) 2508-3562(Online) 한국태양에너지학회 논문집

Solar air collector is a technology that uses the solar radiation heat energy as a heat source for the ventilation and heating of buildings to reduce energy consumption. According to ISO 9806 solar air collector thermal performance evaluation, an indoor performance evaluation method uses a solar radiation simulator in indoor chambers, and an outdoor performance evaluation method uses natural solar radiation in outdoors. The thermal performance evaluation has to ensure the reliability of the thermal performance of the collector using the outdoor performance evaluation method that is affected by the changes in the seasonal outside air temperature. This study compared and analyzed the thermal performance of the glazed solar air collector depending on ambient temperature variations in February, March, and April. The average outside air temperature was –0.5°C in February, 13.4°C in March, and 21.1°C in April. The experiment indicated that the solar air collector thermal performance was 68.1% in February, 68.5% in March, and 63.8% in April and the temperature difference between the inlet and outlet with 1000 W/m² condition was 29.2°C in February, 27.5°C in March, and 29.0°C in April. These results indicated that seasonal ambient temperature variations had a small effect on the solar air collector thermal performance evaluation. Therefore, the result of the outdoor solar air collector thermal performance evaluation was reliable irrespective of the seasonal ambient temperature changes.