Solar Thermal Water Heater for Rural Clinics
A 200 L evacuated-tube system that delivers 55 °C water to clinics without grid power.
- Discipline
- Mechanical Engineering
- Stage
- Validated
- Project type
- Team project
- Timeline
- Mar 2022 — May 2023
- Owner
- Thandiwe Mokoena
Designed, built and monitored over 14 months at three Eastern Cape clinics.
Problem Definition
Rural clinics in the Eastern Cape rely on electric geysers that fail during outages, leaving staff without hot water for sterilisation and hygiene.
Existing Solutions
Flat-plate collectors were tested before but lost up to 40% efficiency in winter and suffered frost damage.
Proposed Solution
A passive thermosiphon system using evacuated tubes, an insulated 200 L tank and a frost-tolerant heat-pipe manifold.
Design & Implementation
The manifold was optimised in ANSYS Fluent, then fabricated locally. Each site was instrumented with eight thermocouples and a flow meter logging at one-minute intervals.
Results & Conclusions
Across 14 months the systems delivered water above 55 °C on 91% of days, with no frost failures and a measured solar fraction of 0.78.
Lead thermal designer: sizing, CFD of the manifold, test rig and 14-month data analysis.
Supporting evidence
No evidence files have been attached yet.