Bad experience with evacuated tubes.

[mkel]

Have been researching tube failure and efficiency etc... This was an excellent post. Thanks for the information. Very helpful.

THANKS FOR THE COMMENT... I'm glad you found this helpful.

I haven't been to this forum in a few years but after I got the e-mail of your post I went and did a short edit at the bottom of the original post I made.
Basically repairs to heat tubes ... failures of repairs etc.

http://www.solarpaneltalk.com/showthread.php?4096-Bad-experience-with-evacuated-tubes/page4

I still love the system I built but these heat tube failures have been a giant pain in the butt.
mike

[Tony2046]

Thanks Mkel

I've been experimenting with evac tubes for a few years now. Have 80 tubes on the roof and last year I started to have heat tube failures. I want to add some comments about my experiences and maybe they will help someone else.... some of these comments are my opinions with no scientific tests.
Please don't rip me if I miss-spell something --

1. I read where a infra-red heat detecter could be used on the glass tubes to determine if a heat tube had failed inside. I did a reading on all 80 tubes and wrote down each reading. there were a number of tubes that read 4+ degrees higher than others (supposedly indicating the heat tube is bad). When I pulled the tubes I found no correlation based on this method.

2. My ratio of failed heat tubes was about 40%. They had split and I do agree with statements in this forum that this was a product of freezing.

3. Found a number of tubes that had NOT split yet were expanded at the bottom.

4. My supplier offered to replace all my heat tubes however I declined because I have no faith that the new tubes will have anything different in them and would just become a future failure. I have repaired all 80 tubes by soldering a refrigerant access valve on the bottom of the tube. Pulling the schrader valve out I can charge the tube with fluid and then replace the valve. Heating the tube I depress the valve until I feel a bit of moisture from the fluid. At that point I close the valve and replace the valve cap.
These tubes work great and because of the valve I was able to experiment with different mixtures and quantities to find the best ratio for my tubes.

5. In this process I cut all the tubes that had not burst. I found that every tube contained a different amount of fluid with a variance of as much as 8cc. Some tubes had almost nothing.. maybe 2cc. The fluid appeared to be dirty water and I suspect the copper dust is not a product of engineering but residue from poor manufacturing of deburing or pipe prep. The amounts of residue went from a trace to quite a bit and some had none.

6. SUMMARY -- I believe the tubes that split had much more fluid (water) in them than the ones that didn't split. the pipes that were expanded had more fluid in them than the ones that looked normal.
It appears the manufacturing process is sloppy at best. The random liquid levels in the heat tubes may explain why the infra-red heat reading didn't work. In experimenting with different amounts of fluid in the tubes I found a wide swing of temperatures depending on the amount. I lined up 8 tubes with different amounts of fluid from 2cc to 14cc. This provided interesting results and I found 7cc to be the perfect amount for my pipes. Less than 7cc worked well in direct sun but at 7cc I got some heat even when it was cloudy... only dropping off when clouds were very thick. Solution of choice turned out to be acetone. Nothing else I tried provided as good of results... and it won't freeze. There is ZERO chance of a failed acetone heat tube contaminating the water circulating in a evacuated tube system. Also for those who are paranoid of explosion... I put one of these acetone heat tubes in my burn barrel and cooked the crap out of it with no explosion.. solder did melt and acetone escaped with no event noted.

Hope some of this info helps others. It is a shame the manufacturing of these tubes has left the customers with this problem. Worst part for me was the huge number of trips up and down from the roof removing and replacing the tubes.
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mkel

Have been researching tube failure and efficiency etc... This was an excellent post. Thanks for the information. Very helpful.

[Peter69_56]

Lost Tubes

Yes, every tube (Sydney tube or single wall) has a "getter" which is a small ring at the bottom of the tube and is designed to absorb any gasses. When the tube looses its vacuum, the getter basically evaporates and makes the tube cloudy at the bottom, the silver is gone and it is a stark difference from the silvered tip.

Schott got out of the residential thermal collector market a few years ago. Their tubes were too efficient and the glycol couldn't handle it (there were other issues too) and I had to look at all the projects we did and they paid to replace the collectors with one of my choosing. I chose the the Paradigma CPC panels with the SS U-tubes. These ones are 1.8m long and 2.4m wide (almost 5m2 panel!!!) These were the highest quality ones available IMHO. Even with these, there has been a couple of lost tubes in the past few years on an apartment building that I look after.

The problem is that most people would never know if the tube was compromised other than very carefully looking at the utility bill in the summer but most people just carry on with their lives and don't normally go up on a roof to check these things.

Mike thanks for the update, I will keep an eye on mine and see how they go. I regularly get up on my roof and check out how everything is going, wash off all the bird crap and so on. Will let everyone know if I have failures. Mine are U tube style.

[MikeSolar]

Is it obvious if they have lost vacuum? Apart from lost heat ability do they discolour or frost over or anything?

Yes, every tube (Sydney tube or single wall) has a "getter" which is a small ring at the bottom of the tube and is designed to absorb any gasses. When the tube looses its vacuum, the getter basically evaporates and makes the tube cloudy at the bottom, the silver is gone and it is a stark difference from the silvered tip.

Schott got out of the residential thermal collector market a few years ago. Their tubes were too efficient and the glycol couldn't handle it (there were other issues too) and I had to look at all the projects we did and they paid to replace the collectors with one of my choosing. I chose the the Paradigma CPC panels with the SS U-tubes. These ones are 1.8m long and 2.4m wide (almost 5m2 panel!!!) These were the highest quality ones available IMHO. Even with these, there has been a couple of lost tubes in the past few years on an apartment building that I look after.

The problem is that most people would never know if the tube was compromised other than very carefully looking at the utility bill in the summer but most people just carry on with their lives and don't normally go up on a roof to check these things.

[Peter69_56]

My tubes are Linuo Paradigma solar collectors CPC-1506 C-1-0/06-47/1500/1-5so

Is it obvious if they have lost vacuum? Apart from lost heat ability do they discolour or frost over or anything?

[Peter69_56]

Tube Failures

I've been playing with tubes for about 25 years. First the Philips tubes (Corning, originally), then Thermomax and Viessmann all of which are single wall vacuum and all of which have the same problem over time.....the seals at the ends of the tubes veerrrryyy slowly have air diffuse through.

I have seen some of the Philips tubes that were tried in the arctic by the Canadian military. Some were still good and I made a few panels out of a total of 200 tubes, but most had lost their seals. This was almost 20 years after they were made.

I cannot say whether I have seen any reports from Australia about tube longevity as most of it was noted at conferences in Germany or here. According to a couple of Chinese manufacturers I have talked to over the years, it is taken for granted that the tubes will occasionally fail which is why they are easily bought singly for $1 or 2 in China. They don't consider it a big issue.

My tubes are Linuo Paradigma solar collectors CPC-1506 C-1-0/06-47/1500/1-5so

[MikeSolar]

I've been playing with tubes for about 25 years. First the Philips tubes (Corning, originally), then Thermomax and Viessmann all of which are single wall vacuum and all of which have the same problem over time.....the seals at the ends of the tubes veerrrryyy slowly have air diffuse through.

I have seen some of the Philips tubes that were tried in the arctic by the Canadian military. Some were still good and I made a few panels out of a total of 200 tubes, but most had lost their seals. This was almost 20 years after they were made.

I cannot say whether I have seen any reports from Australia about tube longevity as most of it was noted at conferences in Germany or here. According to a couple of Chinese manufacturers I have talked to over the years, it is taken for granted that the tubes will occasionally fail which is why they are easily bought singly for $1 or 2 in China. They don't consider it a big issue.

[mkel]

don't know

Well I can't answer that question.... I have been playing with these for about 5 years and had no problems until a few years ago. We had a cold snap for about 2 weeks where the temp never got above 10 degrees and wind chill was well below zero. ( I'm in Missouri USA ) shortly after that I noticed a big drop off in my heat output. I waited until spring to pull tubes and that is when I found that a lot of the heat tubes had burst at the bottom. If you read this entire thread you will find my posts about this... with pictures. I totally believe that my tubes had nothing more than water in them and I talk about that in previous posts. It is hard to say if all manufacturers were doing the same thing or if people have had this occur a lot in very cold climates. I know I can fix them and when they work they work very well.... but I will say it's been a large pain in the ass. If had paid some company for the system and if I didn't know how to do stuff like this I'd be screwed.... with a useless system on my roof. Fortunately it's just a big experiment for me and it's been fun but will never pay for itself. When all tubes are working it provides 95% of our hot water and it also heats the garage.... and I hope to heat part of the house with it someday. (the remaining 5% accounts for very dense cloudy days.. usually in December and January)
mike

I would be interested in knowing if these tube failures are happening more in countries that have freezing conditions such as North America, canada, England etc. Of the Australian contributers here (or other countries with similar climates), are you experiencing thses signifigant tube failures as well? I have not heard of this in this country to date and would be very interested in knowing if its a fair possibility here as well?

[Peter69_56]

I would be interested in knowing if these tube failures are happening more in countries that have freezing conditions such as North America, canada, England etc. Of the Australian contributers here (or other countries with similar climates), are you experiencing thses signifigant tube failures as well? I have not heard of this in this country to date and would be very interested in knowing if its a fair possibility here as well?

[inetdog]

I will provide another update when I get a permanent solution to the problems I've had with the tube repairs.

Mike

You might want to consider the classic method of adding the charge through a small diameter copper tube and then either pinching off or soldering the end of the tube (or both). This is close to zero cost and should not leak. Just make sure the tube is long enough that you can cut the pinched portion off to recharge and then crimp it again a few times before you have to replace the tube.
This is not ideal for refrigerant gas because you will not be able to pump the old refrigerant out, but for acetone I do not see any drawbacks.

[mkel]

10 month followup on evac tube repairs -- some lessons learned ---

OK ... it was just about a year ago I started repairing my broken heat tubes via acetone solder method. I left my original post below if you are unaware of what I had done.
I noticed it worked great all summer but my temps started dropping off about 2 months ago.... so I pulled a few random tubes to see what was up.
It appears I have had a total failure of all of the repaired tubes .... but it isn't all bad news ... in fact some good came out of it.

There was a lot of speculation that the solder would melt at the high temps inside the glass tubes... I found no failed solders.
all the tubes I pulled had lost the acetone and the copper was black from heat but all of the solders were fine and held on a vacuum test on the workbench.
Here is what did fail ... all of the refrigerant schrader valves.
For those who didn't know what I had done to repair the heat tubes.....
I had soldered schrader valves to the bottom of the tubes and added the charge through them and then heated the tube unit I got some vapor then closed the valve and put the valve cap on.... and at this point (one year later) it is totally obvious the schrader valves can't take the heat. I pulled the internal part of the schrader valve and the bad gasket out of the cap and recharged the tube putting the cap on tight with teflon tape. I have 2 tubes in the yard cooking for about a week this way and they are bloody hot.
But this isn't a solution I am comfortable with... I will try to find a solder cap that will fit my heat tube copper ( looked before and wasn't successful ) and if I fail to find any, I will try to charge a tube and use a refrigerant crimper at the end of the heat tube and then solder the end shut.

You will notice in the pic in my original post of the schrader valve I had put that if it didn't work I could solder the valve cap on ...
well I tried that and wasn't able to get it to solder very well.
possibly because I wasn't able to get the threads clean enough after a year in the tube.


Lessons learned ...
#1. the solder will hold even if the charge is lost and the tube cooks with no way to dump heat.
#2. Refrigerant valves can not take the heat inside the glass tubes and will fail.
#3. in theory and testing the acetone works great and produces excellent heat at the bulb.
#4. If you are doing one of these systems DO NOT put the tubes on your roof ... they are a bitch to take down and put back ... my biggest mistake in this whole experiment.

I will provide another update when I get a permanent solution to the problems I've had with the tube repairs.

Mike

I've been experimenting with evac tubes for a few years now. Have 80 tubes on the roof and last year I started to have heat tube failures. I want to add some comments about my experiences and maybe they will help someone else.... some of these comments are my opinions with no scientific tests.
Please don't rip me if I miss-spell something --

1. I read where a infra-red heat detecter could be used on the glass tubes to determine if a heat tube had failed inside. I did a reading on all 80 tubes and wrote down each reading. there were a number of tubes that read 4+ degrees higher than others (supposedly indicating the heat tube is bad). When I pulled the tubes I found no correlation based on this method.

2. My ratio of failed heat tubes was about 40%. They had split and I do agree with statements in this forum that this was a product of freezing.

3. Found a number of tubes that had NOT split yet were expanded at the bottom.

4. My supplier offered to replace all my heat tubes however I declined because I have no faith that the new tubes will have anything different in them and would just become a future failure. I have repaired all 80 tubes by soldering a refrigerant access valve on the bottom of the tube. Pulling the schrader valve out I can charge the tube with fluid and then replace the valve. Heating the tube I depress the valve until I feel a bit of moisture from the fluid. At that point I close the valve and replace the valve cap.
These tubes work great and because of the valve I was able to experiment with different mixtures and quantities to find the best ratio for my tubes.

5. In this process I cut all the tubes that had not burst. I found that every tube contained a different amount of fluid with a variance of as much as 8cc. Some tubes had almost nothing.. maybe 2cc. The fluid appeared to be dirty water and I suspect the copper dust is not a product of engineering but residue from poor manufacturing of deburing or pipe prep. The amounts of residue went from a trace to quite a bit and some had none.

6. SUMMARY -- I believe the tubes that split had much more fluid (water) in them than the ones that didn't split. the pipes that were expanded had more fluid in them than the ones that looked normal.
It appears the manufacturing process is sloppy at best. The random liquid levels in the heat tubes may explain why the infra-red heat reading didn't work. In experimenting with different amounts of fluid in the tubes I found a wide swing of temperatures depending on the amount. I lined up 8 tubes with different amounts of fluid from 2cc to 14cc. This provided interesting results and I found 7cc to be the perfect amount for my pipes. Less than 7cc worked well in direct sun but at 7cc I got some heat even when it was cloudy... only dropping off when clouds were very thick. Solution of choice turned out to be acetone. Nothing else I tried provided as good of results... and it won't freeze. There is ZERO chance of a failed acetone heat tube contaminating the water circulating in a evacuated tube system. Also for those who are paranoid of explosion... I put one of these acetone heat tubes in my burn barrel and cooked the crap out of it with no explosion.. solder did melt and acetone escaped with no event noted.

Hope some of this info helps others. It is a shame the manufacturing of these tubes has left the customers with this problem. Worst part for me was the huge number of trips up and down from the roof removing and replacing the tubes.
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mkel

[inetdog]

Temperature differences from one end to another in a heat pipe.

I am a fizzycist by training, but not an engineer (and I can spel) , and here is what I have learned about heat pipes:

If a heat pipe is working properly, the only gas inside the pipe will be the vapor phase of whatever liquid is the "working fluid" of the pipe. The vapor pressure under these circumstances will be dependent only on the temperature of the inside wall of the pipe. And since the pressure is constant from top to bottom of the pipe (there is not a strong wind blowing from one end to the other inside the pipe!), the temperature must be the same at both ends *as long as the system is in equilibrium*.

It is somewhat like a pot of boiling water: The water temperature is almost identical from the heated inner surface of the bottom of pot to the top surface of the water. When you apply more heat on the stove, the water boils faster but the bottom water is still not any hotter than the water at the top. (OK, there will be a small difference in pressure from the bottom to the top, since water is fairly dense. But we can ignore that effect in the heat pipe since it is mostly full of vapor.) And the transfer of heat from bottom to top in this case will mostly happen by convection which is stirred by the boiling effect. In a heat pipe the fluid is boiling at the bottom, the vapor moves freely up the pipe, condenses at the top, and runs back down to the bottom as liquid. The is referred to as "mass transport", and is more efficient than either convection or conduction.

You may get some temperature difference between the outer wall of the bottom of the pipe and the inner wall if you are adding heat to it fast enough. And the same a the top end where it connects thermally to the manifold and you are removing heat from it. But that should be only fractions of a degree.

If there is a significant difference in temperature along the heat pipe from one end to the other, or from the top of the heat pipe to the manifold, then is it a sign that there is more than just the liquid and its vapor inside the pipe, and that is interfering with the movement of vapor from the bottom of the tube to the top. If there is no liquid left inside the tube, the temperature difference from one end to the other will be even greater.
So a heat pipe can fail either by air getting in (partial fallure, the more air the poorer the performance) or by the water all leaking out as vapor (at that point you just have a copper tube, which will still conduct heat from one end to the other, just not very well.)

Two of the many factors in the choice of working fluid are the latent heat of vaporization, which is very high for water compared to most other useful fluids, and the useful range of the vapor pressure versus temperature curve. A liquid with too low a boiling point at atmospheric pressure (lower than the manifold temperature, for example) will have to operate at a potentially dangerously high pressure inside the heat pipe

End of lecture, sorry about that....

[MikeSolar]

The liquid inside the tube refluxes (evaporates/condenses) in the tube - if there is a hole in the tube all will escape and no reflux action - end of game

Air diffuse through copper? Not gonna happen under these conditions - that 'theory' hasn't checked in with science or practical knowledge - if air does diffuse through copper does then cancel all refrigeration units -heat pumps etc.

I know this is an old post, just working my way through

No refrigeration system would work for long if ANY vapour went through a copper wall. Period. Also, every hot water heating system would then have O2 dissolving through it and rotting out the pumps etc. Ain't gonna happen.

[MikeSolar]

[QUOTE=Art VanDelay;37847]This thread contains a juicy irony:

I can't find a US engineer selling heat pipe evacuated tubes who knows for sure how they are freeze protected. I've gotten a few folks to speculate, and I don't mind speculating either. Pointed questions to the Chinese manufacturers result in the "trade secret" answer.

A few things are pretty clear, however:

1. Quality problems or design errors have resulted in a high historic heat pipe failure rate.

2. Since some heat pipes work and don't freeze break, it is possible to make the technology work for North America.

3. All the large Chinese manufacturers use water in the heat pipe as the working fluid.

4. Overfilling of the heat pipes with water can cause freeze breaks.

5. Not all of the heat pipe failures are from freezing. A high percentage of pre-2006 Apricus tubes stop functioning without any external evidence.

So, be sure you get an enforceable warranty from your supplier. Better yet, get the supplier to explain how their freeze protection works and how they maintain the quality to ensure they are manufactured correctly.

For you "Evacuated Tube Geeks", here's a quote from a forthcoming NREL report on the topic of Chinese collectors:

"Production and use of evacuated tube collectors is growing worldwide; the nature of glass tube production favors high degrees of automation. In the late 1970

[daves]

Curious Daves, have you adjusted your output calculations for area?

That is not my site. I agree the flat panel has much bigger aperture size. But the owner compares output per area taken on roof.

Once vacuum tubes will be 100% working for many years and you have enough space, then vacuum tubes are better choice.

Since vacuum tubes are still unstable (blow HP, loss of vacuum, high price) its still better plat panel imho. Btw, my choice is UP, but I think flat panel is better anyway.