Numerical Heat Transfer Analysis of Evacuated Tube Solar Collector Using MXene/Soyabean Oil Nanofluid

Abstract

This study focuses on investigating the thermo-hydraulic performance and entropy generation rate of an evacuated tube solar collector using MXene/Soybean oil as a working nanofluid by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). A complete 3-D geometry is considered using three different kinds of working fluids (water, soybean oil and MXene/Soybean oil-0.025 wt.%, 0.075 wt.%, and 0.125 wt.%) for five different mass flow rates (0.02475 kg/s, 0.04818 kg/s, 0.0717 kg/s, 0.0952 kg/s, and 0.1188 kg/s) under same solar radiation (925W/m2). The results revealed that MXene/SO-0.125 wt.% at 0.0717 kg/s showed the best thermo-hydraulic performance because it achieves the balance between a high heat transfer coefficient and a low-pressure drop. However, MXene/SO-0.125 wt.% has been shown to have the highest entropy generation rate compared to other loadings because thermal efficiency is directly proportionate to the entropy generation rate. Therefore, the final recommendation for the best working fluid is MXene/SO 0.075 wt.% at 0.4818 kg/s because it attains good thermal efficiency, low entropy generation rate, and when compared to water has shown the highest improvement of 31.1%.