Serpintine versus grid
Posted: Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:26 pm
After looking at Gary's two designs I have to ask which design has better yield.
I realize that doing the serpentine design in copper would be some
what harder to do and the grid in pex would require many more connectors which having not worked much with pex I assume are a
little spender than copper.
Reasoning for asking this is I built my hot air solar panel Number 1
using aluminum tubing in a serpentine design and cut in time from
sun hitting it to kick on is about ten minutes and it will blow 110 to 130 degree air all day and never cutoff and I have a much large cfm fan on it than most of the hot air panels I have seen. And it is my belief from plotting it over a number of days that at least two things
are positive ,and that is that, the longer the medium takes to get to the exit point the higher the temp and that on hot air solar that the
more turbulence you can create in the air stream the better the mix.
Water or a mix thereof reacts different from air but desired effect is same in the end, heated transfer medium.
So in summary is it better to make it take longer to get through the panel for a higher exit temp or is the grid design which would move more through but heat in a more cascade effect better.
I realize that doing the serpentine design in copper would be some
what harder to do and the grid in pex would require many more connectors which having not worked much with pex I assume are a
little spender than copper.
Reasoning for asking this is I built my hot air solar panel Number 1
using aluminum tubing in a serpentine design and cut in time from
sun hitting it to kick on is about ten minutes and it will blow 110 to 130 degree air all day and never cutoff and I have a much large cfm fan on it than most of the hot air panels I have seen. And it is my belief from plotting it over a number of days that at least two things
are positive ,and that is that, the longer the medium takes to get to the exit point the higher the temp and that on hot air solar that the
more turbulence you can create in the air stream the better the mix.
Water or a mix thereof reacts different from air but desired effect is same in the end, heated transfer medium.
So in summary is it better to make it take longer to get through the panel for a higher exit temp or is the grid design which would move more through but heat in a more cascade effect better.