Low tech solar collector for tiny houses

This master thesis subject has been proposed by Hellow, a company specialized in sustainable tiny houses who explores the impact of innovative construction techniques on housing affordability and environmental sustainability.\\ Given its perpetually available nature, solar energy emerges as a leading solution to address future energy problems, given the anticipated depletion of fossil fuels. Low-tech air solar collectors are promising in harnessing this energy due to low maintenance and long life cycles. \\ This thesis evaluates the power output of such devices, focusing on the geometry and impact of the materials. Python simulations were conducted, alongside validation with experimental data from built collectors. The goal is to assess the performance and optimize the design of low-tech air solar collectors for domestic purposes.\\ Our research showed that the behavior is highly dependent on the irradiance. For a given mass flow rate, a collector with an area 1.84 larger than another one outperforms the latter of 14.6 $\%$ for a mean irradiance of 234 $\frac{W}{m^2}$ and it increases to 61.86 $\%$ of additional power output with a mean irradiance of 598 $\frac{W}{m^2}$. An efficiency improvement of up to 20 $\%$ is achievable through the insulation of the collector.\\ The yield is found to increase with the mass flow rate and can be kept constant around 50 $\%$ of the irradiation from spring to autumn by forcing a variable mass flow rate thanks to a small fan. In this configuration a collector with an area of 0.658 $m^2$ harnesses 280.84 [kWh] throughout the year with a global yield of 49.54 $\%$. The simulation uses heat exchanger transfer coefficients computed experimentally for a collector of 0.658 $m^2$ and 1.212 $m^2$ at different mass flow rate.\\ A natural convection set up experimentally achieved a yield of 5.75 $\%$. We assessed experimentally the optimum number of baffles to 5 for the collector of 0.658 $m^2$ which leads to an expected yield of 50.82 $\%$ Edges have a heat transfer coefficient of 3.05 $\frac{W}{m^2}$, the back face a coefficient of 1.52 $\frac{W}{m^2}$ with insulator and the front 7.22 $\frac{W}{m^2}$\footnote{0.658 $m^2$ collector}. The losses through the front face therefore represent on average more than 40 $\%$ of the total losses.\\ The global heat transfer for the losses is found to be 6.275 [W] on average for the 0.658 $m^2$ collector. \\ These findings demonstrate that low-tech solar collectors can significantly contribute to reducing energy consumption in tiny houses. While not a complete replacement for traditional heating systems, they provide a substantial supplementary solution that promotes sustainable living practices. AI has been used to enhance the turning of sentences, correct the text, and improve the vocabulary.