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WHAT ARE EVACUATED TUBES?

As with most technological advances, solar water heating systems have become more and more efficient, with Evacuated tubes as a method of solar water heating claiming efficiencies of around 90%. Albeit that Evacuated tubes are usually more costly in initial purchase that flat solar panels, the efficiency generated by evacuated tubes results in it being one of the cheapest forms of renewable energy.

Evacuated tubes are commonplace in many countries with "twin-glass tubes" being the most popular both because of cost and reliability. As the glass tubes have all gasses "evacuated" (in order to create a vacuum) it is not hard to understand why they are known as evacuated tubes.

The construction of Evacuated Tubes is that they are made from glass - with a double wall construction. The glass on the inner tube is coated on its outer surface with an absorbent coating, and on its inner surface with a reflective coating. Internally the tubes are a vacuum with a centrally located copper heat pipe. It is logical to use a vacuum as, vacuums are excellent insulators (which is why we have vacuum flasks). The suns heat energy is collected by the copper pipe which contains a conductive fluid.

As the heat increases the hot fluid continues to be pumped through piped into the hot water tank and so forth.

The advantage of using evacuated tubes is that they work even in the midst of the coldest winter months, unlike standard flat Solar panels.

Even if it is very cloudy and very cold, enough sunlight gets through to keep the tubes well above freezing and so they will be still be pre-heating the water which can then be heated further by a standard immersion heater reducing the costs of heating the water. The solar tubes are usually put on modules of 10 or 20 tubes which are then connected via insulated copper piping to a suitable hot water cylinder.

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