Thermal examination of renewable solar energy in parabolic trough solar collector utilizing Maxwell nanofluid: A noble case study

Abstract

Solar energy is a harmless form of energy that is plentiful. Due to the extreme usefulness of solar energy, it is used in applications like solar collectors (SCs). The application leads to this research that focuses specifically on the inclined magnetically driven Maxwell nanofluid flow on an endless plate. The Maxwell nanofluid flows past over an exponentially uniform, horizontal porous stretchable plate inside the parabolic trough solar collector (PTSC). The essential exterior resources in PTSC like thermal radiative, viscous dissipative flow and Joule heating parameters are considered. Two common Maxwell nanofluids are always being used in the application are chosen in this research; Copper-methanol (Cu-Ch3OH) and Titanium-methanol (TiO2-Ch3OH) in this research. The governing equation in PDEs involved is converted into higher-order ODEs by utilizing the similarity variables. The converted ODEs are solved numerically by adopting the Keller-box scheme. Based on the findings, Cu-Ch3OH nanofluid has better heat transfer compared to TiO2-Ch3OH. It is also found that the Cu-Ch3OH thermal efficiency can achieve a maximum of 29%.

Keywords

• PTSC
• Maxwell-nanofluid
• Inclined magnetohydrodynamic
• Entropy generation
• Keller box method