Some common uses of solar collectors are: Heating systems. Heating pool water. Electricity production in large solar thermal power plants. Solar thermal collectors work based on the principle of absorbing solar energy. Although there are different types of solar collectors, as we will see later, the operating principle is similar in all of them.
The thermal energy from the solar collector could be used in space heating, water heating, and steam generation or stored in thermal storage for later use. The solar thermal collector can be classified according to the fluid type: liquid heating type and air heating type.
A solar collector is a heat exchanging device used to convert solar energy absorbed from incident solar radiation to thermal energy (Tripanagnostopoulos, 2012). You might find these chapters and articles relevant to this topic. Alec Shirazi, ... Stephen D. White, in Energy Conversion and Management, 2018
In these applications, solar collectors and thermal energy storage systems are the two core components. This paper focuses on the latest developments and advances in solar thermal applications, providing a review of solar collectors and thermal energy storage systems.
Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of conventional solar thermal collector . The absorber surface of conventional solar thermal collector is made up of aluminum due to its high thermal conductivity and is blackened in order to absorb maximum incoming solar radiations and transforms this thermal energy to the air flowing beneath .
There are two main types of collectors: non-concentration and concentrating collectors. In non-concentration collectors, the collector area and absorber area are the same. These collectors intercept solar radiation and absorb it without concentrating it.