28 June 2015 to 3 July 2015
Africa/Johannesburg timezone
SAIP2015 Proceeding published on 17 July 2016

Evaluation of an empirical model for a flat plate solar collector

1 Jul 2015, 16:10
1h 50m
Board: F.139
Poster Presentation Track F - Applied Physics Poster2

Speaker

Ms Nothando Ndlovu (University of Fort Hare)

Apply to be<br> considered for a student <br> &nbsp; award (Yes / No)?

Yes

Please indicate whether<br>this abstract may be<br>published online<br>(Yes / No)

Yes

Abstract content <br> &nbsp; (Max 300 words)<br><a href="http://events.saip.org.za/getFile.py/access?resId=0&materialId=0&confId=34" target="_blank">Formatting &<br>Special chars</a>

A simple empirical model for a flat plate solar collector is presented. The model describes the hot water temperature at the collector outlet for the system installed in Alice, South Africa. The empirical model takes a top-down approach in which collected data is used to predict collector outlet temperature. The fluid outlet sensor of the two collector plate system was positioned to measure combined water temperature of both collectors. A data acquisition system was designed and built to measure weather data, temperatures and flow data and these variables used as predictors to the model. The regression results indicate an adjusted R squared value of 0.946 which is an acceptable value. Model validation was done by evaluating the root mean square error (RMSE), mean bias error (MBE) and the correlation coefficient (CC). The results comparing measured and calculated temperature show that the model is reliable in predicting the collector out let temperature. The average maximum error was found to be 4.83 which is in the range of the acceptable error margin.

Level for award<br>&nbsp;(Hons, MSc, <br> &nbsp; PhD, N/A)?

Msc

Would you like to <br> submit a short paper <br> for the Conference <br> Proceedings (Yes / No)?

Yes

Main supervisor (name and email)<br>and his / her institution

Dr Michael Simon
msimon@ufh.ac.za
University of Fort Hare

Primary author

Ms Nothando Ndlovu (University of Fort Hare)

Co-authors

Dr Michael Simon (FHIT) Mr Stepehn Tangwe (University of Fort Hare)

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