R Kouhikamali - Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran
M Hassani - Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Guilan, Rasht, Iran

The possibility of using flat plate collector in northern parts of Iran specially city of Rasht has beeninvestigated in this paper. Due to the high humidity in the northern parts of this country, diffuseradiation plays a more important role than direct radiation. This fact can change the results of deliveredsolar energy and the best tilt angle of the collector compared to the sunny central cities. Therefore,maximum solar energy based on the best tilt angle is calculated first. Relative to the horizontalcollector, changing the tilt angle, the daily, monthly, seasonally and yearly delivered solar energyincreases16.58%, 15.84%, 15.31% and 10.79%, respectively. Then, the steady state two dimensionalequation of conduction for the collector plate has been solved to obtain the length of the collectorrequired for heating the water to a desired temperature20 meters of a typical collector (10 numbers)increases the water temperature to 66 and 85˚C in the months December and September, respectively.Mean efficiency of the collectors decreases with increasing the temperature of inlet water. That is, theefficiency of the first and tenth collectors is approximately 60% and less than 10% respectively.

Flat Plate Solar CollectorCollector Tilt AngleThermal AnalysisCollector Efficiency