Experimental study on thermal performance of filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube

The filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube, in which the filled layer is used to transfer energy absorbed by working fluid in the U-tube, is proposed to eliminate the effect of thermal resistance between the absorber tube and copper fin of the conventional solar collector. In this paper, the thermal performance of the filled-type evacuated tube was researched by means of experimental study. In order to avoid the effect of some uncertain factors, the single collector tube was considered as investigated objective. The test setup of the thermal performance of the filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube was established. The results show that the filled-type evacuated tube with U-tube has a favorable thermal performance compared with the evacuated tube with copper fin. The heat efficiency of filled-type evacuated tube is higher than that of copper fin evacuated tube by 12%. The useful energy gain of filled-type evacuated tube is 22% higher than that of copper fin evacuated tube at the practical irradiance received (T) = 800 W/m(2) and flow rate (f) = 0.005 L/s. In addition, the exergy efficiency of the filled-type evacuated tube is higher than that of copper fin evacuated tube.