Acknowledgement First and foremost we would like to express our sincerely acknowledgement for our instructor and advisor

Mrs.Teshome Bekele for giving this project and his continual assistance in doing this project. We also would like to express our gratitude for bdu iot student cafeteria workers for giving as the necessary information. Our classmates also need thanks for their suggestions and comments.

Control of solar system

Control of solar thermal water heating system controls the flow of heating fluids and water, based on temperature differential measurement at the collector and storage tank. Solar system control mechanism provides three important features: Maximize overall system efficiency Increase reliability Minimize system cost Prevent freeze Over heat protection

The main importance of solar heater control system is freeze prevention and thereby maximizing system efficiency. Freeze prevention Freeze prevention is system installed to avoid damage to the system due to the expansion of freezing transfer fluid. Also prevents the system from exposing lower temperature that may be achieved at on the solar collector. Freeze prevention can be achieved by the following methods Antifreeze solution Expandable collector material Drain back (automatic or manual) Drain down (automatic or manual) Storage fluid circulation Collector heating elements

For open loop unpressured system drain back alone is sufficient, for this case drain back system with expansion tank is preferable.

Automatic drain back system The system will be consists of Differential controller that compares the collector temperature with storage thank temperature. The temperature difference between these temperatures should be at the optimum value i.e. it should not be too minimum or too maximum for proper performance of water heating system. In a typical active system, the controller turns the pump on when the water in the collector is about 810 C warmer than the water in the tank, and it turns the pump off when the temperature difference approaches 35 C. This ensures the water always gains heat from the collector when the pump operates and prevents the pump from cycling on and off frequently. Sensors attached at one third height of storage tank height and collector surface end provides the temperature difference. Differential controller prevents freezing by shutting off the pump. The size of expansion tank will be determined from the required working fluid volume. Volume of expansion tank

=40L Safety valves Shut off valves? In similar manner differential controller works to avoid over heating in the case when hot water required is in excess.

Cost estimation of solar thermal water heater

The total cost of solar thermal water heater is the initial installation cost. This is due to the fact that solar thermal water heaters have a very little maintenance and running cost during working time. The total installation cost is tabulated as follow Item number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 item Collector Water storage tank Heat exchanger Circulating pump Electric motor Supporting frame Differential controller Expansion tank Circulating pipe Control valves Item price per unit quantity 45 2 1 1 1 m 1 Total price

Payback time Payback time is the time required that the initial installing cost equalizes with running cost of other power sources. In this case, it is the time when the installation cost balances with electric and fuel oil consuming cost. The daily cost for providing 14,000L hot water daily at temperature of 80 is calculated as follow: The cooking hot water uses oil Daily fuel requirement in litres =

The daily oil cost becomes

, the ratio ( ) describes part of water used for cooking from the total hot water. For making tea and washing purpose electric power which is about three times cheaper than naphtha is used. The daily electric consumption cost is therefore

Daily electric consumption

So, the daily eclectic power cost is 439.11 birr Then the total daily cost is = birr per day Payback time is calculated finally as;