Performance of Flat-Plate and

Compound Parabolic Concentrating

Solar Collectors in Underfloor
Heating Systems
Sarvenaz Sobhansarbandi1
Mem. ASME
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Eastern Mediterranean University,
Gazimagusa North Cyprus via Mersin 10, Turkey
e-mail: sobhan.sarvenaz@gmail.com

U
gur Atikol
Professor
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Eastern Mediterranean University,
Gazimagusa North Cyprus via Mersin 10, Turkey
e-mail: ugur.atikol@emu.edu.tr

There is a growing interest in using solar energy in underfloor

heating systems. However, the large areas required for the installation of solar thermal collectors array can be discouraging,
especially in the apartment buildings where the apartments roof
is a common area. The objective of this study is to investigate the
possibility of using compound parabolic concentrating (CPC)
solar collectors instead of the commonly used flat-plate collectors
(FPCs) in such systems. It is aimed to explore the feasibility of
area reduction required by the collectors. Second, the temperature
profiles of circulating water loop and the concrete slabs are sought
to be examined. The system consists of solar thermal collectors, a
storage tank, and circulation of water to transport the heat to four
similar floor slabs. The CPC collector outlet fluids temperature
can reach a maximum of 95  C, compared to 70  C obtained from
the FPCs. The results from the simulations show that a 2 m2 CPC
collector array can perform satisfactorily to match the job of an
8 m2 FPC array, obtaining the same required circulating waters
temperature in the slabs. [DOI: 10.1115/1.4029229]
Keywords: solar energy, floor heating, TRNSYS, simulation

Introduction

Utilizing solar energy for underfloor heating of residential

houses has been emerging as a viable solution in many countries
enjoying sufficient sunshine in winter. In Cyprus, which is well
known as a sunny island located in Mediterranean Sea, two
different approaches are applied in the construction of these systems. In the first practice, the solar energy is designed to be stored
directly in the floor slabs of the house; whereas in the second, a
hot water cylinder is used as the primary energy storage system. It
is observed that in many villas, where the storage tank is not used,
the number of FPCs used for the practice would be 16 to 22 in
numbers, in order to collect sufficient solar energy during the day,
and transfer the energy into the floor slabs (storage media in this
case). In the second practice, where typically a storage tank of
1000 l is used as the storage media, the number of six FPCs would
be sufficient for providing the required heat. Figure 1 shows a typical residential house in North Cyprus, where the first practice
1
Corresponding author.
Contributed by the Solar Energy Division of ASME for publication in the JOURNAL
OF SOLAR ENERGY ENGINEERING: INCLUDING WIND ENERGY AND BUILDING ENERGY
CONSERVATION. Manuscript received May 14, 2014; final manuscript received November
17, 2014; published online December 23, 2014. Assoc. Editor: Werner Platzer.

Journal of Solar Energy Engineering

was utilized. The 22 FPCs positioned toward south, occupying a

large area of the back yard.
Providing the heat through underfloor heating system has taken
a great interest in the recent years. Yeo et al. have investigated the
changes and recent energy saving potential of residential heating
in Korea. They showed that modern apartment buildings with hot
water radiant floor heating yield not only less heat loss due to the
tighter envelope but also yield higher energy consumption due to
the use of energy more effectively [1]. Ghali investigated the economic feasibility of the underfloor heating system for the climatic
condition of Beirut. He developed two mathematical models plus
the economic feasibility of the underfloor heating system when
integrated with solar energy [2].
A number of studies were performed regarding the application
of solar energy in underfloor heating systems and its advantages
by experimental and simulation analysis. Badran and Hamdan did
a comparative study for underfloor heating using solar collectors
or solar ponds. In their work, a theoretical and experimental study
is made for underfloor heating system using solar collectors. Also,
a study for a similar system using solar ponds is made with the
same main conditions. The obtained results from their study show
that the solar collector systems are 7% more efficient than the solar pond systems [3]. Cuneyt et al. have worked on a floor heating
system using solar energy in Ankara, Turkey. The aim of their
study was to investigate a floor heating system for an office, by
utilizing solar energy as the main source of energy. A thermal
comfort analysis is performed in their study using Fangers
method. In their study, solar energy is collected by FPCs and
stored in a storage tank. The results from their applied method
indicate that the thermal comfort can be provided with such a
heating system [4].
Haddad simulated a model for a house equipped with a radiant
floor heating system connected to solar collectors used to evaluate
the potential of using solar energy for space heating in the Northern Chicago climate. The solar fraction of the system is predicted
when the supply temperature to the radiant loops is constant and
when this temperature is changed according to outside temperature reset control [5]. Athienitis and Chen investigated the effect
of solar radiation on dynamic thermal performance of floor
heating systems. They performed a numerical investigation of
transient heat transfer in floor heating systems using a threedimensional explicit finite difference model by focusing on the
influence of the cover layer and incident solar radiation on floor
temperature distribution and on energy consumption [6]. Alkhalaileh et al. present the development of modeling simulation and
analysis of a solar pond floor heating system. They stated that the
solar pond heating system could meet most of the winter season in
Jordan with solar fraction in the range of 80100% for at least two
months of the season [7].
The aim of this study is to simulate a domestic underfloor heating system and compare the performance of two types of solar
thermal collectors in this system. One of the problems encountered by the house owners is finding enough space for the

Fig. 1 A house using solar collectors for underfloor heating,

Nicosia, North Cyprus

C 2015 by ASME
Copyright V

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placement of the collectors; therefore, it is highly desirable to use

the minimum possible space without losing performance. The
present work investigates and compares the use of FPC and CPC
solar collectors for a desired underfloor heating application in
Cyprus.

System Description

A schematic diagram of the system in the present study is

shown in Fig. 2. The collector (A) receives the solar radiation
available on a specific day. A stratified storage tank (B) has been
used that the thermal stratification improves the overall performance of the system. In such solar thermal storage tanks, the cold
fluid (water in this study) is withdrawn from the bottom, fluids
Temperature at the Bottom (TBottom), to be heated at the heat
source, i.e., solar collectors, and returns to the top of the tank at a
relatively higher temperature [8].
An on/off differential controller (C) generates a control function between the Outlet fluids Temperature of the Collector
(TOColl) and TBottom. The temperature of the fluid entering the
floor slabs must be controlled not to be exceeded from a specific
amount, considering the construction properties. In this regard,
hot fluid flow withdrawing from TOP of the tank (TTOP) is mixed
with the return water with lower temperature at the Tee-Piece,
reaching a moderate temperature before entering the floor heating
slabs (D). As the water passes through the slabs, the heat will be
transferred to the room by convection, so the outlet water from the
slabs will have lower temperature from that of the inlet. The slabs
outlet water is then directed to a three-way tempering valve that is
used for moderating the temperature described in part (C) before
entering the tank.

Modeling of the System

In this study, a simple indirect underfloor heating system using

solar energy with weather data of Larnaca, Cyprus, is simulated.
The TRaNsient SYStem (TRNSYS) software has been applied for
simulation section. The schematic of the systems configuration is
shown in Fig. 3. As it can be seen in this figure, FPC and CPC
solar collectors can be interchanged in the systems arrangement,
while the other components will be kept without any changes. The
components have been chosen from the standard and thermal
energy systems specialists (TESS) component libraries from
TRNSYS software, where each component has its own properties
and specific mathematical descriptions.
In system configuration, TMY2 is the component reading the
weather data on hourly basis regularly and applies the solar radiation values to find the tilted surface radiation and angle of incidence for an arbitrary number of surfaces. Types 73 and 74 are
the components for thermal performance of a theoretical flat-plate

Fig. 2

034501-2 / Vol. 137, JUNE 2015

Fig. 3 TRNSYS modeling scheme of the system using FPCs or

CPC collectors

and CPC solar collectors, respectively, where the HottelWhillier

model [9] is used for evaluating the thermal performance of both
collectors. The specific properties of FPC and CPC solar collectors are adjusted in a way to be able to deliver comparable
performances (Table 1).
Type 2b is the differential controller component which is
controlling the operation of the pump by monitoring TTOP and
controlling the system performance by comparing the TOColl
with TBottom. Type 3d is a single speed pump which is either
on or off based on the appropriate received signal from Type
2b. Type 4c is the stratified storage tank (which consists of six
nodes with equal heights in this study), where the solar fluid is
assigned to be stored in it during the night time. The tank is connected to the type 2b for specifying the Tl (lowest temperature)
and Tin (monitoring temperature). Type 11h is the Tee-piece in
which two inlet liquid streams are mixed into a single liquid outlet
stream. Type 11b is the tempering valve which has one inlet and
two outlets that its performance depends on the outlet fluid temperature of the tank (TTOP). In a case that TTOP reaches a temperature higher than the adjusted suitable temperature, the tempering
valve will transfer proper portion of the cold water to the
Tee-piece in order to moderate the outlet fluids temperature. The
outlet fluid from the Tee-piece needs to be diverted to the floor
heating slabs in each floor. Type 11f is the flow diverter, in which
a single inlet fluid is split into two outlet fluids according to a user
specified valve setting. On the other hand, the outlet fluids from
the floor heating slabs need to be accumulated in order to return to
the cycle. By applying type 11d as the flow mixer, two inlet fluids
are mixed based on an internal control function, in order to maintain the temperature at or below a user specified value. Type 653
is the simple floor heating system that operates under the

Schematic diagram of the system

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Table 1 Parameters of FPC and CPC collector

Parameters

Table 2 Simple radiant slab system

FPC

CPC collector

Parameters

Number is series
Collector area (m2)
Fluid specific heat (kJ/kg  K)
Intercept efficiency
Collector fin efficiency factor
Absorbance of absorber plate
Incidence angle
Axis orientation

1
8
4.19
0.8

45 deg

Inlet flow-rate (kg/s)

Energy collected by solar
collector (kJ/s)

0.035
6.6

1
2
4.19

0.7
0.8
45 deg
Transverse plane 90 deg
from the longitudinal
0.035
10.26

Amount

Material
Capacitance of slab
Specific heat of fluid
Slab-to-ambient loss coefficient
Slab-to-zone heat transfer coefficient

Concrete
7500 kJ/K
4.19 kJ/kg  K
500 kJ/h  K
2000 kJ/h  K

where UAtop is the heat transfer coefficient between slab and top
zone and UAback is the heat transfer coefficient between the slab
and the sink temperature.
Also, the energy transferred to the slab from the fluid stream is
calculated by

Ta can be as low as 34  C, whereas during day time it is between

12 and 17  C, while the solar intensity at noon hours is consistently in the vicinity of 2100 kJ/h  m2 (583 W/m2) for radiation on
the horizontal surface and 3700 kJ/h  m2 (1027 W/m2) for radiation on tilted surface. The solar radiations on horizontal and on
tilted surface can be seen in Fig. 4. The incidence angle for both
collectors is 45 deg and also the assigned inlet water flow-rate is
125 kg/h (0.035 kg/s).
The system is simulated with an 8 m2 array of FPC (common
required area of the collector for underfloor application) as the
base starting point, following with a trial and error method to find
the best optimized area of CPC collector. In order to be able to
compare the performance of the collectors, the simulation analysis
was applied under a controlled system configuration, where all the
components adjustments were keep fixed with the same operational properties. The results suggest that a 2 m2 array of CPC
collector can match in the same final floor slabs temperature as
the FPC.
The obtained results from both solar collectors are shown in
Figs. 5 and 6. The simulation shows that during the day time the
solar fluids temperature will increase by absorbing the solar radiation by the collectors. On the other hand, the water circulation
will be stopped during night time while the fluids temperature
will decrease due to the thermal losses of the system. The advantage of this method is that the outlet water from collectors is stored
in storage tank during the day time and will provide the desired
heat which yields into the required slabs temperature in underfloor heating system.
The outlet fluids temperature of the FPC is between 25 and
70  C, whereas for CPC collector this range is between 25 and
95  C. As a result, total energy gained by the collectors is according to the inlet and outlet fluids temperature into the collector as
follows and is presented in Table 1:

Q_ in Cpmin Tfluid;in  Tslab

_ p Tc;o  Tc;i
Q_ c mc

assumption that the slabs can be treated as a single lump of isothermal mass. The energy transfer of the inlet fluid to the slabs
can be modeled using a heat exchanger effectiveness approach
[10]. The simple radiant slab parameters are shown in Table 2.
By assuming a lumped capacitance floor system, the energy
balance of the slab is defined in the form dT/dt aT b, where
a and b terms are described as
a

eCmin  UAzone  UAloss

mslab Cpslab

(1a)

where e is the effectiveness factor of the fluid/slab heat exchanger,

which has the value between zero to one, Cmin is the minimum of
the slab capacitance and the fluid, UAzone is the heat transfer coefficient between the slab and the zone, and UAloss is the overall
thermal loss coefficient of the collector per unit area
b e Cmin

Ttop
Tfluid;in
Tback
UAtop
UAback
mslab Cpslab
mslab Cpslab
mslab Cpslab
(1b)

(2)

where Cpmin is the minimum specific heat capacity of the slab and
the fluid.
And the energy that is transferred from the slab to the zone is
Q_ zone UAtop Tslab  Ttop

(5)

where m_ is the solar fluid mass flow-rate (0.035 kg/s), cp is the

specific heat capacity of solar fluid (4.19 kJ/kg  k, water specific

(3)

Consequently, the outlet fluids temperature of the slabs is calculated by

Tfluid;out Tfluid;in 

Q_ in
m_ fluid Cpfluid

(4)

where Cpfluid is the specific heat of fluid passing through the

slab [10].

Results and Discussion

The simulations have been accomplished on January as it is one

of the coldest months of the year. For better comparing the results
of both selected collectors, Jan. 13 is chosen specifically. The
hourly ambient temperature (Ta) of the Larnaca airport, Cyprus
(hypothetical location of the model system), and also total radiation on horizontal are examined. It is observed that at night time,
Journal of Solar Energy Engineering

Fig. 4 The hourly variation of total radiation on horizontal and

tilted surface

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Fig. 5 The hourly variation of TBottom, TOColl, TSlab, and

TTOP-FPCJan. 13

heat capacity), and Tc,i and Tc,o are inlet and outlet fluids temperature into the collector.
The total energy absorbed by the CPC collector is much greater
than that of the FPC, so concerning the limitation of the required
space for system installation; it is more preferable to apply a CPC
collector which yields to occupy less functional area while achieving the desired output heat. As the differential controller has a
crucial role in systems functionality of the first loop, a specific
configuration has been made for its controlling operation. In this
regard, the TOColl is set as the upper input temperature (Th),
TBottom as lower output temperature (Tl), and TOColl as the
monitored temperature for the high limit cut out (Tin). The differential controller is investigating the temperature difference
between Th and Tl and sends the appropriate signal to the pump
according to the specified dead bands. There is a high limit cut out
temperature that can be defined as desired, which in this study is
defined as 100  C for TOColl. The irregular behavior in temperature variation in Fig. 6 is basically due to the differential controller function which controls the performance of CPC solar
collector in order not to exceed the temperature limitation. The
differential controller configuration made it possible to preserve
the energy by stopping the pump function accordingly.
The variations of inlet and outlet water flows temperature into
the slabs are shown in Fig. 7, where the inlet flows temperature is
approximately 45  C. The flow is providing the desired heat
(around 24  C) through the slabs surface to the surrounding, so
the fluids inside of the slabs lose their heat and reach to a lower
temperature value. The outlet fluid from the slabs is then

Fig. 6 The hourly variation of TBottom, TOColl, TSlab, and

TTOP-CPC collectorJan. 13

034501-4 / Vol. 137, JUNE 2015

Fig. 7 The hourly variations of inlet and outlet water flows

temperature into the slabsJan. 13

transferred to the circulation loop using a flow mixer and the

procedure will repeat again.

Conclusion

The aim of this study was to simulate a solar underfloor heating

system by TRNSYS software in Cyprus. The hourly investigations
are performed for one specific day, Jan. 13, one of the coldest
days of winter. The main idea was to collect the sun radiation by
means of solar collectors and transferring that to the demand side
which is floor-heating in this study.
Although FPCs are more common for domestic applications,
they may have limitations in terms of spaces they occupy. As
these collectors are not commonly used in high temperature applications, so the collector arrays area should be optimized. The
comparison between the collectors performances was applied
under a controlled system configuration, which all the operational
properties (including the components properties, weather data, solar radiation value, etc.) remain constant for simulation analysis.
The simulation suggests that a 2 m2 CPC collector can perform
satisfactorily to match the job of an 8 m2 FPC, which results in a
24  C heat from floor slabs surface. It is observed that using CPC
collector can increase the thermal fluids temperature in a range
between 25 and 95  C, whereas for FPC this range is between 25
and 70  C. As the required area for collectors installation is a critical issue for each house owner, it can be concluded that using
CPC collectors by occupying less space compared to FPCs is
beneficial for the desired application.

Nomenclature
Cp specific heat capacity of solar fluid (kJ/kg  K)
Cpfluid the specific heat of fluid passing through
the slab (kJ/kg  K)
Cpmin the minimum specific heat of the slab and the fluid
(kJ/kg  K)
_ solar fluid mass flow-rate (kg/s)
m
Ta ambient temperature ( C)
Tback the temperature to which losses from the slab
occur ( C)
Tc,i temperatures of input collectors fluid ( C)
Tc,o temperatures of output collectors fluid ( C)
Tfluid,in the temperature at which fluid enters the slab ( C)
Tfluid,out the temperature at which fluid exits the slab ( C)
TSlab temperature of the slab ( C)
Ttop the temperature of the zone ( C)
TBottom water temperature at the bottom of the tank ( C)
Th upper input temperature of differential controller ( C)
Tl lower input temperature of differential controller ( C)
TOColl outlet temperature of the collector ( C)
UAback the heat transfer coefficient between the slab and the
sink temperature (kJ/h  K)
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UAloss overall thermal loss coefficient of the collector per

unit (kJ/h  m2  K)
UAtop the heat transfer coefficient between slab and top
zone (kJ/h  K)
UAzone the heat transfer coefficient between the slab and the
zone (kJ/h  K)
e the effectiveness of the fluid/slab heat exchanger
[0, 1]

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Journal of Solar Energy Engineering

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