EFFICIENCY PREDICTION OF SOLAR AIR HEATER WITH THE USING OF DIFFERENCE SIZE OF RIBS BY COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING (THERMAL)

ABSTRACT-This paper presents the study of heat transfer in a rectangular duct of a solar air heater having Different size of square rib roughness on the absorber plate by using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The effect on the surface heat transfer and velocity were investigated. In this Solar air heater an absorber plate is made of ‘Aluminium’ and Roughened with difference size ribs due which creates the turbulence in the flow of fluid (air) and increases the heat transfer from the absorber plate to the fluid. The commercial finite-volume based CFD code ANSYS FLUENT 16.0 is used to simulate turbulent airflow through artificially roughened solar air heater. The computations based on the finite volume method with the SIMPLE algorithm have been conducted for the air flow in terms of Reynolds numbers ranging from 3000-18000. CFD simulation results were found to be in good agreement with experimental results and with the standard theoretical approaches. It has been found that the temperature & velocity is increasing at the outlet side and also turbulence is increasing due to the different rectangular ribs shape of the duct.

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