Instrumentation and Automation System of a Vacuum Tube Solar Water Heater Based on Industry 4.0 Under Real Operating Conditions

Solar collectors allow us to take advantage of solar thermal energy, the energy is transferred from a heat radiation source to the working fluid, one of the most used is the evacuated tube solar collectors. In order to experimentally calculate the efficiency of evacuated tube solar collectors, it is necessary to measure physical parameters in real operating time that have an impact on their thermal performance. The main objective of this research is to instrument and automate an evacuated tube solar water heater subjected to real operating conditions, and using industrial components for monitoring and storing temperature, solar radiation, and wind speed in real-time, using the internet of things IoT and cloud computing technologies. For the development, the mechatronic design methodology, a VDI 2206 standard is used. It begins with the solution concept, followed by detailed engineering, selection, and dimensioning of the electrical control panel, instrumentation of the solar water heater, and the implementation of the electrical panel. The algorithm was programmed using the programmable logic controller, PLC, the supervision and control system, SCADA, and the data are stored locally in a SQL server. The developed system allows monitoring of the data through the Internet of Things IoT and cloud computing, industry 4.0. The most important results are to monitor the temperature at 3 levels, both in the collector tank and in the vacuum tube, as well it was monitored the water input temperature, the ambient temperature, the solar radiation, and the wind speed; all these measurements allow having data from a prototype of a commercial evacuated tube collector at real operating conditions.