Search results

Solar energy applications are limited because of its intermittent and discontinuous availability with respect to time. Hence, solar energy thermal conversion systems need integration with thermal storage units (TSUs) to use solar energy in off sunshine hours. This paper aims to perform thermal analysis of a solar air heater (SAH) integrated with a phase change material (PCM)-based TSU to supply hot air during night period.

An experimental setup with TSU as main component was prepared with SAH at its upward side, food chamber at its downward side as subcomponents. In TSU, paraffin wax was used as thermal energy storage material. Mass flow rate of air considered as an input parameter in the experiment. Two different absorber plates, namely, plane and ribbed absorber plates were used for the experimentation. Each day for a fixed mass flow of air, observations were made during charging and discharging of PCM.

Nusselt number and convection heat transfer coefficients were analytically calculated by considering flow through TSU as external flow over bank of tubes in a rectangular duct. A temperature drop of around 7-8°C during charging of PCM and temperature rise of around 4-5°C during discharging of PCM was observed from the experimental results. The average practical efficiency of TSU with ribbed absorber plate SAH during charging and discharging of PCM was 22 and 6 per cent, respectively, higher than that of TSU with plane absorber plate SAH.

There are no limitations for research on SAH integrated with TSU. Different PCM including paraffin wax, Glauber’s salt, salt hydrates and water are used for thermal storage. Only limitation is lower efficiency of SAH integrated with TSU because of lower heat transfer coefficients with air as working medium. If it can improve heat transfer coefficients of air then heat transfer rates with these units will be higher.

There are no practical limitations for research on SAH integrated with TSU. Sophisticated instrumentation is needed to measure flow rates, temperatures and pressure variations of air.

In poultry farms during night, chicks cannot survive at cold climatic conditions. Hence, hot air should be supplied to poultry farms whenever the atmospheric temperature drops. It is proposed that, in combination with TSUs, heat produced by SAH is stored in day time in the form of either sensible or latent heat and is retrieved to provide hot air in the night times. This will reduce total operating costs in poultry farms.

Conventionally, people are producing hot air by combusting coal in poultry forms. This cost around Rs. 75,000 per month for a batch of 225 to 250 chicks in a poultry form. Hot air could be produced economically during off sunshine hours from SAH integrated with TSU compared to the conventional method of coal burning. Present experimental investigations conducted to fill the literature gap in this area of research and to design a SAH integrated with TSU to produce hot air for poultry forms.

In this study, the effects of using corrugated absorber plate (instead of flat plate) and also using aerosol/carbon-black nanofluid (instead of air) on heat transfer and turbulent flow characteristics in solar collectors were numerically investigated.

The 3D continuity, momentum and energy equation were solved by finite volume and SIMPLE algorithm. As a result, the corrugated absorber plate was inspected in the case of triangle, rectangle and sinuous with the wave length of 1 mm and wave amplitude of 3 mm in turbulent flow regime and Reynolds number between 2,500 and 4,000. Choosing the proper geometry was carried out based on the best performance evaluation criteria (PEC) and increasing the air temperature from collector inlet to outlet.

The results revealed that for all times of the year the highest PEC was obtained for corrugated Sinusoidal model; however, the highest temperature increase from inlet to outlet was obtained for rectangular corrugated model. In addition, the results indicated that in sinusoidal model, the nanoparticles volume fractions increase leads to heat performance coefficient increase and the best heat performance conditions were attained in volume fraction of 0.1 per cent and Reynolds number of 4,000 for both six months period. In model with rectangular corrugated plate, usage of nanofluid in all range of Reynolds numbers leads to reduction of outlet temperature.

The effect of some nanoparticles on heat transfer using thermal– hydraulic performances in heat exchangers has been assessed, but the effects of atmospheric aerosol-based nanofluid using carbon-black nanoparticles (CBNPs) on the heat transfer in corrugated heat sink solar collectors by 3D numerical modeling has not been yet investigated. In present study, usage of CBNPs with different volume fractions in range of 0 to 0.1 per cent in turbulent regime of fluid flow is analyzed. Furthermore, in this paper, besides the effects of using CBNPs, a solar absorber located in Shiraz, as one of the best solar irradiation receiver cities in Iran is evaluated.

Over the recent years, solar energy has received outstanding attention from researchers. Solar energy applications and related large-scale projects are increasing to meet growing global energy demand as an economical, non-polluting and renewable energy source. The purpose of this study is investigating different plenum and absorber configurations of solar air heating wall (SAHW) experimentally and numerically.

In this study, various configurations of SAHW have been numerically simulated to determine the most effective design. According to the simulation results, two SAHWs with various plenum thicknesses have been fabricated and tested at different conditions.

Numerical simulation results indicated that parallel-flow SAHWs exhibited better performance in comparison with other placements of absorber plate. Regarding to the experimentally attained results, the highest thermal efficiency was reached to 80.51%. Also, the average deviation between experimentally and numerically obtained outlet temperature is 5.5%.

Considering the obtained results in the present study, designed SAHW has admissible efficiency to be used in various industrial and residential applications such as; air preheating, space heating and drying.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the enhancement of the performance of bubble absorber using hybrid nanofluid as a cooled NH₃/H₂O absorption system to reduce their size and to find the best fitting model. A numerical model for ammonia-water bubble absorber was developed to show the influence of operating conditions and design parameters on the absorber performance.

A finite difference numerical method is used to solve the numerical model. The model is subjected to the inlet conditions of liquid, vapor and coolant flow regimes. The absorber modeling was divided into small elements along the absorber length.

The model proposed is validated with previously published works. Then agreement between the both is considered as good.

Numerical results/The use of hybrid nanofluids.

The results showed that the hybrid nanofluid is the best cooling medium. Very high heat transfer rates are obtained because of the high thermal conductivity and specific heat of hybrid nanofluid, and consequently, the absorber size decreases. It was also found that the absorber thermal load and the mass absorption flux increase with increasing of solid volume fraction. Also, the existence of an optimal absorber length was revealed, required for complete absorption when using hybrid nanofluid as a cooling medium. It is recommended that using hybrid nanofluid to remove the heat from the absorber is the best candidate for NH₃/H₂O absorption performance enhancement.

This study aims to investigate the effect of porous material (clay pots) and it is facing on the productivity performance of a pyramid type solar still. The clay pots are placed in the basin facing up and facing down. The numbers of clay pots considered were 9 and 25, and its performance was compared with normal (0 clay pots) solar still.

The pyramid solar water distillation system has been designed, fabricated and tested under the actual environmental conditions of Kanchikacherla (16.6834 ⁰N, 80.3904 ⁰E), Andhra Pradesh, India. The solar still is used to produce the fresh water and hot water simultaneously from the brackish (i.e. containing dissolved salts) feed water for domestic applications. From open literature, it was established that the rate of evaporation is higher when the flowing water is held for a longer duration on the black color absorber plate, thereby leading to an increase in productivity of freshwater. Therefore, the pyramid solar still has been tested for smooth absorber plate and the absorber plate with porous heat storage material.

The porous material increases the production rate of freshwater compared to a base plate. However, the pyramid still with clay pots has higher productivity at a lower temperature because of the porosity effect.

The total dissolved solids, electrical conductivity and pH of the distilled water and the saline water have also been measured and compared.

A two‐dimensional numerical study was carried out to investigate laminar forced‐convection heat transfer characteristics of air flow in a two parallel plate channel with offset plates and heated by a radiation heat flux. The SIMPLE method was used for the numerical prediction of the flow and thermal fields. The flow field temperature boundary conditions were obtained by applying the energy balance equation to boundary elements. The ray tracing technique was used to obtain the net absorbed radiation fractions in the boundary elements. The numerical results were validated with measured temperature values and experimentally calculated values of local Nusselt number (Nu_x), and a reasonable agreement was shown. Then the numerical simulation was used to study effects of design parameters on the convective heat transfer coefficient. It was found that in Re numbers from 650 to 2,550, the optimum spacing of offset plates relative to the nearest channel wall was around one third of the channel height. Also, the optimum offset plates’ numbers can be calculated based on one offset plate length being equal to one and a half times the channel hydraulic diameter. A correlation of average Nusselt number between the flowing air and the offset plates was obtained as follows; —Nu = 1.81 Re ^0.352Pr^1/3(D_h/l)^1/2.

To cover the main contributions and developments in solar thermal collectors through focusing on materials, heat transfer characteristics and manufacturing challenges.

A range of published papers and internet research including research work on various solar thermal collectors (flat plate, evacuated tubes, and heat pipe tube) were used. Evaluation of solar collectors performance is critiqued to aid solar technologies make the transition into a specific dominant solar collector. The sources are sorted into sections: finding an academic job, general advice, teaching, research and publishing, tenure and organizations.

Provides information about types of solar thermal collectors, indicating what can be added by using evacuated tube collectors instead of flat plate collectors and what can be added by using heat pipe collectors instead of evacuated tubes.

Focusing only on three types of solar thermal collectors (flat plate, evacuated tubes, and heat pipe tube).

Useful source of information for consultancy and impartial advice for graduate students planning to do research in solar thermal technologies.

This paper fulfils identified information about materials and heat transfer properties of materials and manufacturing challenges of these three solar thermal collectors.

Use of packed beds, enhanced tubes, nano-fluids and artificial ribs are few passive techniques to increase heat transfer in solar air heaters (SAHs). Artificial ribs attached to the absorber plate of the SAH will enhance the turbulence near the plate. Experimental analyses are conducted to find the thermal performance of SAH with ribs of regular geometries including rectangular, semi-circular and triangular in cross section. This paper aims to present the improvement in thermal performance of SAH with modified-arc.

Absorber plates are designed with ribs of rectangular, triangular, semi-circular and modified-arc in cross-section using existing data in literature. Physical dimensions of the ribs are designed by adapting procedure from literature. Absorber plates are manufactured with ribs and coated with blackboard paint and fixed to the existing SAH. Experiments are conducted with a variable-speed blower fixed to the inlet section of the SAH, which is used to supply air at different mass flow rates in a range between 0.495 and 0.557 kg/min.

Efficiency is found to be a strong function of mass flow rate of air through the SAH from the present experimental investigations. It was found that use of modified-arc ribs enhanced the efficiency of SAH by 105.35 per cent compared to SAH with plane absorber plate. Efficiency of SAH with modified-arc ribs is found to be higher by 24.43, 45.61 and 63.21 per cent, respectively, for SAH with semi-circular, rectangular and triangular arc ribs on its absorber plate.

Experiments on SAH are conducted during daytime from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in open atmospheric conditions. Solar intensity is continuously changing during the experimentation from morning to evening. Calculations are made based on the observations with average values of solar intensity and temperature readings. More accurate values of SAH efficiency can be obtained with constant heat supply to the absorber plate by simulating the experimental setup in indoor conditions. Temperature and flow rate observations could be more accurate with sophisticated instrumentation rather than using simple thermocouples and orifice meters.

SAHs are basically used to supply hot air for both rural and industrial applications. These are used for crop drying, preheating of air, removal of moisture from leather, chemicals, etc. Conventionally, formers in India are using open sun drying to remove moisture from agricultural products. In this method, the moisture can be removed up to a level of 20 to 25 per cent. Use of SAH can remove moisture up to below 5 per cent and process is clean without reducing the quality of agricultural products. Enhancing the efficiency of SAHs will surely increase its usage by formers for crop drying.

Use of artificial ribs on absorber plate of SAH is most economical among many of the active and passive techniques. Numerical and experimental investigations are found in literature with regular cross-sectional ribs, including rectangular, triangular and semi-circular. The present work proposed new shape of the ribs named as modified-arc, which was not presented in the literature. Experimental analysis proved that the use of modified-arc makes the SAH more efficient in heat transfer.

The purpose of this investigation is to determine the nature of the flow field, temperature distribution and heat and mass transfer in a triangular solar collector enclosure with a corrugated bottom wall in the unsteady condition numerically.

Non-linear governing partial differential equations (i.e. mass, momentum, energy and concentration equations) are transformed into a system of integral equations by applying the Galerkin weighted residual method. The integration involved in each of these terms is performed using Gauss’ quadrature method. The resulting non-linear algebraic equations are modified by the imposition of boundary conditions. Finally, Newton’s method is used to modify non-linear equations into the linear algebraic equations.

Both the buoyancy ratio and thermal Rayleigh number play an important role in controlling the mode of heat transfer and mass transfer.

Calculations are performed for various thermal Rayleigh numbers, buoyancy ratios and time periods. For each specific condition, streamline contours, isotherm contours and iso-concentration contours are obtained, and the variation in the overall Nusselt and Sherwood numbers is identified for different parameter combinations.