.
Conclusions
Comparing the two collector designs in several categories:
Build labor
A clear advantage to the screen collector.
Building the boxes takes the same amount of time, but the time to construct the pop can absorber and manifolds is much greater than the time to construct the screen collector absorber and inlet baffle.Materials cost
About an 5% advantage to the pop can collector.
Performance
Under winter conditions, the two collectors perform nearly identically.
Durability
I would expect both collectors to have good lives if built carefully and with good materials.
More test dat and image and details on the panel build can be found in the original article.
Images are from the original article.