Theoretical and experimental investigations on the effect of double pass solar air heater with staggered-diamond shaped fins arrangement

Abstract

This study presents the research study, both theoretical and experimental, on the effect of double pass solar air heater (DPSAH) using staggered-diamond shaped fins effects. Diamond shaped fins are considered to have the potential to improve the convective heat transfer and increase energy efficiency as well. Forty number of diamond shaped fins have been used in this experiment which have been fixed to the plate absorber where there are four mass flow rates (0.0104 kg/s, 0.0157 kg/s, 0.0209 kg/s, 0.0261 kg/s) used and three variations of solar radiations (600 W/m2, 800 W/m2 and 1000 W/m2). The effect of mass flow rates, solar radiation and outlet temperature has greatly affected the overall performance of DPSAH with staggered-diamond shaped fins. For the computational domain fluid, the configuration of mass flow rates and solar radiation is analyzed using COMSOL Multiphysics 5.6.1, hence the actual experiment has been carried out based on the simulation results. The highest thermal efficiency obtained for experiment and simulation were 59.34% and 62.01% for mass flow rates of 0.0261 kg/s using solar irradiance of 1000 W/m2.

Keywords

• Double pass solar air heater
• Fins
• Upper channel
• Thermal efficiency
• COMSOL