Experimental testing of a solar thermal collector with composite TIM of plastic Honeycomb and silica aerogel polyurethane containers

Abstract

A new proposal of high performance flat plate solar thermal collector (FPC) based on Transparent Insulation Materials (TIM) combining silica aerogel contained in insulation containers with plastic honeycomb is evaluated and compared with similar state of the art technologies. Thus, the proposed FPC shows better performance than the basic plastic honeycomb collector at high Dt/G > 0.074 while potentially protecting the honeycomb layer from reaching high temperatures. This data is compared as well with a previous version of the FPC with combined TIM of plastic honeycomb with silica aerogel to demonstrate that the performance has been improved with a new construction strategy.