EPI International Journal of Engineering pISSN 2615-5109 Volume 3, Number 2, August 2020, pp. 143-149 eISSN 2621-0541 DOI: 10.25042/epi-ije.082020.09 143 Performance Analysis of Solar Water Heating System with Plate Collector Integrated PCM Storage Andi Syahrinaldy Syahruddin a, , Jalaluddin b, *, Azwar Hayat c a Department of Mechanical Engineering,Engineering Faculty, Hasanuddin University. Email:a.syahrinaldy@gmail.com b Department of Mechanical Engineering,Engineering Faculty, Hasanuddin University. Email: jalaluddin_had@yahoo.com c Department of Mechanical Engineering,Engineering Faculty, Hasanuddin University. Email:azwarhayat@unhas.ac.id Abstract Availability of solar energy as a renewable energy source is very abundant and inexhaustible. Solar water heater is an equipment that utilizes solar energy as a source of energy. The thermal performance of a solar water heater system using absorber plate with phase change material (PCM) as thermal energy storage is presented in this study. Two design of solar water heater collectors with absorber plate variations, i.e. an absorber plate with PCM storage and absorber plate without PCM storage were investigated experimentally and numerically simulation. First, the material properties of paraffin wax as PCM storage was analized analyticaly. Every shape model of solar water heater systems were imported and simulated at three variations of constant solar radiation, i.e. 400 W/m 2 , 700 W/m 2 , and 1000 W/m 2 . The simulation using a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) fluent software. The results showed that the average collector efficiency between absorber plate with and without PCM storage is 70.98 % using experimental study and 67.73 % using numerical simulation study. Keywords: Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD); Fluent software; solar water heater system; Phase Change Material (PCM) 1. Introduction The availability of solar energy as a renewable energy source is very abundant and inexhaustible. A solar water heater is an equipment that utilizes solar energy as a source of energy and has been used in various countries around the world. However, because there were still many shortcomings of existed solar water heater, various research on it were carried out. Research on solar water heating systems is considered very important because it is expected to be able to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of solar water heating technology. Previous research is an experimental study of solar water heater system with V-shaped plate absorber [1], two solar water heater systems were installed and tested at a low flow rate of 0.5 L/min and a high flow rate of 2 L/min. The results showed that the solar water heater system with a V-shaped plate absorber had a 3.6-4.4% better performance compared with that of the system with a flat-plate absorber. On another side, a high temperature on the V-shaped plate surface causes heat losses to the collector surface to become large too, so needed thermal energy storage which can maximize the performance of the solar collector. Experimental performance investigation of a solar phase change material (PCM) has been presented and discussed by Pisut Thantong [2] in a tropical climate. The experiment has proved that the solar phase change material is energy efficient in terms of heat gain reduction and energy saving. Palacio [3] has presented a comparative experimental analysis of a conventional flat plate solar collector and an identical prototype with thermal storage system by PCM and the results indicate that the selection of the PCM and the contact conduction between the absorber and PCM are key factors to increase the collector performance respect to conventional flat plate solar collector. Study towards improving charge/discharge rate of latent heat thermal energy storage has been studied by Yanping Du [4] has a result that the temperature of PCM- metal foams composite/case study of paraffin became more uniform, while the cold discharge rate was improved by approximately 8 times. Optimization of melting and solidification processes of PCM integrated collector storage solar water heater has been analyzed by Allouhi [5] with result optimize obtained when a mass flow rate of 0.0015 kg/s is used with a PCM thickness of 0.01 m and set the temperature of 313 K. A study about simulated solar water heaters has been investigated by Badiei and Eslami [6] with a solar flat plate collector integrated with a layer of PCM and the resulting temperature distributions are analyzed during two different summer and winter days in Shiraz, Iran. Results show that although the system with PCM has lower output temperatures in the morning, hot water can be supplied in a longer duration in the evening while discharging. In this study, a solar water heater that integrated a PCM storage as thermal energy storage (TES) with a thermosyphon system was simulated and investigated experimentally. Two modelings of solar water heater systems with two different heat collectors, i.e. an absorber *Corresponding author. Tel.: +62 821-9226-7077 Jalan Poros Malino km. 6 Bontomarannu Gowa, Indonesia 92171