Experimental and numerical investigation of heat transfer characteristics in solar flat plate collector using nanofluids
Tiko Rago Desisa
Abstract
Solar collectors are a type of heat exchanger that converts solar radiation into the working fluids’ internal energy. This research focuses on the experimental investigation of heat transfer characteristics in SFPC using Al2O3/water as a working fluid with a parallel tube arrangement. The efficiency of the SFPC was evaluated with a various mass flow rate 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4 kg/min and nanoparticles with a mean diameter of (15–50 nm). The computational fluid dynamics model was applied to numerically investigate the steady and laminar flow means in an SFPC applying ANSYS fluent 17.1 software including nanofluids not covered experimentally (CuO/water, Ti2O/water, and Si2O/water). The coefficient of heat transfer for various nanofluids is studied in terms of the Nusselt number compared to the SFPC using water. The increment in Nusselt number for 3% vol. concentration of CuO, Al2O3, Ti2O, and Si2O are 4.1423%, 3.3429, 3.3011, and 0.6887 respectively at 0.2 kg/min. The CuO and Si2O nanoparticle has higher and lower improvement than others nanoparticles. Also, the study reveals that the pressure drop is trivial on all occasions.