Energy, exergy, economic and environmental analysis of a solar air heater integrated with double triangular fins: Experimental investigation

Abstract

Solar air heaters are considered an important sustainable technology that offers hot air for different applications. This study investigates the effect of using double triangular fins with different arrangements on the performance of solar air heaters. An experimental investigation within the framework of energy, exergy, economic, and environmental analyses was carried out in this study. Four collectors, namely flat plate collector, inline double triangular fins collector, staggered double triangular fins collector, and inclined staggered double triangular collector, were designed and developed to achieve the goal of this investigation. The experiments were conducted on various winter days in Iraq under various airflow rates. All the evaluation parameters were found to be highly sensitive to solar radiation and airflow rate. The results of the finned collectors were compared to those of the flat one and were compared against each other. It was observed that integrating the fins into the collector improved the performance compared to the collector without fins. Moreover, the inclined staggered double triangular collector outperformed the other collectors under all the scenarios. It offered promising performance in terms of daily thermal efficiency, exergy efficiency, thermal enhancement factor, and overall annual energy production, surpassing the flat plate collector by 20.7, 52.7 %, 29.2 %, and 20.7 %, respectively, at respective airflow rates and solar radiation. Furthermore, using such a collector reduced up to 14.3 tons of CO2 emissions. The findings of this study underscore the benefit of using double triangular fins on the collector and may guide the innovative design of solar air heaters in the future.

Keywords

• Solar air heater
• Double triangular fins
• Performance evaluation
• Thermo-hydraulic analysis
• Efficiency improvement