Analysis of Two-Phase Flow Solar Collectors With Application to Heat Pumps

A thermodynamic model is developed to analyze the thermal performance of two-phase solar collectors. The well-known equilibrium homogeneous theory is used to model the two-phase flow in the solar collectors. The resultant set of coupled ordinary differential equations for saturated pressure and quality of working fluid in the collector tubes are solved by an iterative procedure using a fourth-order Runge-Kutta method. The results are then applied to determine the thermal performance of a solar assisted heat pump which uses two-phase flow collectors as the evaporator. The results indicate that even with the use of less expensive bare solar collectors as evaporator for the heat pump, the heating coefficient of performance (COP_H) as high as 6 can be obtained under realistic ambient conditions provided a proper matching exists between the collector’s evaporative capacity and the compressor’s pumping capacity.