Enhancement in efficiency of solar air heating system with thermal energy storage system

solar thermal application

In order to produce process heat for drying of agricultural, textile, marine products, heating of buildings and re-generating dehumidify agent, solar energy is one of the promising heat sources for meeting energy demand without putting adverse impact of environment. Hence it plays a key role for sustainable development. Solar energy is intermittent in nature and time dependent energy source. A solar air heater is such a device which is fabricated and integrated with thermal storage system in this paper. A salt hydrate(STL27) is used as a thermal storage medium. The performance of this heater was studied for two configurations and comparison between two configuration is shown in this paper. The solar heater integrated with thermal storage delivered comparatively high temperature. The efficiency of the air heater integrated with thermal storage was also higher than the air heater without thermal storage system. The study concluded that the presence of the thermal storage medium at the absorber plate is the best configuration.

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