Solar Water Heating
Ipsum lorem ad sea, in reque bonorum definiebas mei Ius- The sun heats a solution in the solar collectors located on the rooftop.
- The heated solution is pumped through the heat exchanger located in the hot water tank.
- The heat exchanger heats the water inside the tank and the solution subsequently recirculates back to the solar collectors, where the process begins again.
- The heated water in the hot water tank is ready to use at home.
The collectors are designed as a flat plate or an evacuated tube. Apart from this, there are also other systems that are used in the US and that are designed to deliver heat to an entire building, such as the drain back system or a closed-loop pressurized system.
Flat panels are metal boxes that have a glass front, which allows the sun’s UV rays to pass through. Behind the box, there is an absorbent material that collects the heat; while in the central part of it, there are copper pipes that absorb the accumulated heat that is trapped in the box and that is transferred to the liquid that runs in said pipes. For their part, evacuated tubes work in a similar way to flat panels, but with the difference that they are sets of glass tubes that catch the sun’s rays instead of a box. Either method can use a drain-back or a closed-loop system.
The drain back system is a system that when there is no call for hot water, the liquid in the system drains back into a holding tank and will stay there until there until the next call for hot water. This type of system does not require a circulating pump for the liquid that runs through the collectors, but it does need a careful design with a continuous pitch of the delivering pipes in order to provide a gravity-based drain function.
The drain-back system is a system where, although there is no call for hot water, the liquid from the system is drained into a holding tank, which will remain there until it is used again. This type of system does not require a circulating pump so that the liquid can run through the collectors, but it does require a fairly careful design with a continuous pitch of the delivery pipes to provide a gravity-type drain function. The closed-loop system, on the other hand, does require a pump to circulate the heated liquid through the collectors and the hot water container tank that is inside the building. This last system requires a design that provides a freezing liquid in case it gets too hot.
In our cold climates, these systems will require glycol as a liquid, which is non-toxic and antifreeze; while in hot climates water will be used. Regardless of the system in use, these systems are designed as a supplemental one for conventional heating in the residential or commercial space. If these systems are designed appropriately, it will allow a reduction of the expenses of the heating bills between 60 and 70%.