OPTIMIZATION OF COLLECTOR AREA IN SOLAR WATER HEATING SYSTEMS

Domestic household thermosyphons are economically feasible and are used by over than 70% of houses in Palestine. Although domestic solar water heating for commercial applications has a good potential, only a few systems have been installed in Palestine. A systematic sizing approach for the solar system is presented in this paper and applied to a certain case study. The solar system sizing is based on the life-cycle cost LCC analysis. For the chosen case study of domestic water heating for a hotel, with hot water consumption of 2600 liters per day, the optimum collector area was found to be 37 m², the solar fraction of heating 0.78, the LCC of system is SI 3778, with annual savings of 1338$/year and a pay back period of 3 years. With this optimized system, the cost of water heating is 1.8 $/m³comparing with 2.6 $/m³ for the conventional system.