NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF HEAT TRANSFER ENHANCEMENT FOR DIFFERENT BASE FLUIDS USING AL2O3 ON F.P.S.C UNDER SOLAR SIMULATION

Abstract

In this research paper, the solar irradiance of flat plate solar collector was evaluated using experimental and numerical analysis. In the experiment, an automatic solar simulator was designed and built to simulate the solar irradiance. The simulator was controlled by an Arduino board. The light source and fabrication of the simulator were used for a wide range of testing and the comparison was made between different cases. The test was performed on a flat plate double glazing solar collector with different base fluids; ethylene glycol (EG), glycerine, and water. To enhance the heat transfer, Al2O3 nanoparticles having a diameter of 20 nm were added. In order to investigate the effect of volume fraction on the heat absorption, three-volume fractions, 0.2%, 0.45, and 0.6%, were used in this study. Laminar flow was considered with a flow rate of 1 L/min. Solar irradiance was measured from 11:00 to 13:00 on September 25th, 2016. COMSOL 5.2a was used in a numerical analysis of flat plate solar collector. A good agreement between numerical and experimental for all cases was observed. The maximum temperature difference between inlet and outlet was found when the (water/ Al2O3) was used as a working fluid at a volume fraction of 0.6%.

Keywords

• Flat plate solar collector
• solar simulator
• Base fluids
• Nanoparticles
• volume fraction Al2O3
• COMSOL.