Numerical simulation of a collector/evaporator for direct-expansion solar-assisted heat pump

The objective of the present research work is to realize a numerical analysis of a solar flat plate collector/evaporator, which is a component of a direct expansion solar assisted heat pump (DX-SAHP) system, using computational fluid dynamics. The copper collector/evaporator employed refrigerant R600a as the working fluid and the simulation parameters included a total length of 1 m, constant solar irradiance of 485.07 W·m
^-2
and an average wind speed of 1.5 m·s
^-1
. Resulting in a comparative analysis between experimental results and simulation values, that determined a similar behavior between both cases with a temperature increase of 3.62 °C and an error smaller than 5 %.