Ceramic solar absorbers, collectors, and building-integrated systems: A systematic review and evaluation

Solar energy serves as an alternative energy source to partially replace traditional fossil fuels. For solar absorbers, ceramic materials are ideal raw materials due to their good thermal properties and temperature stress stability. Vanadium-titanium black ceramic (VTBC) solar collectors were developed to overcome the disadvantages of evacuated tube collectors (ETCs) and metal flat-plate collectors (MFCs). Through a systematic synthesis and data evaluation, this review contributed to the scientific area of ceramic solar collection of recent trends in application types, research methods, collection efficiency, and design and optimization. Laboratory tests show VTBC collectors have an average heat collection efficiency of 39% – 83%, with working fluid outlet temperatures peaking at 75—80 °C. Moreover, VTBC collectors have a service life exceeding 50 years and a manufacturing cost of approximately €22/m². More importantly, this work evaluated the passive thermal performance and economic investments of different building-integrated VTBC collection systems based on systematic data extracted from literature review, expert interviews, and field investigations. Future directions of building-integrated ceramic collection technologies encompass two main aspects: one is the integration method of VTBC with specific building categories or its application in specific geographical areas; the other focuses on the efficiency improvement mechanism of novel types of ceramic collection components.