Simulation and numerical study of the effect of corrugated plates on heat transfer and air flow in a solar air heater collector

Subject Areas : Renewable Energy

Amin Ghalenoei ¹ , Ali –Akbar Azemati ²

1 - Assistant prof., Department of Mechanical Engineering, Abadan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Abadan, Iran.
2 - Assistant prof., Department of Mechanical Engineering, Abadan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Abadan, Iran. *(Correwponding Authors)

Received: 2023-11-26 Accepted : 2024-06-19 Published : 2024-10-22

Keywords: Keyword: Solar air heater, corrugated absorber plate, thermal enhancement factor, CFD simulation,

Abstract :

Background and Objective: Nowadays, due to the reduction of energy resources and the importance of the use of renewable energies as a substitute for fossil fuels in order to reduce environmental pollutants, the use of solar equipment has become increasingly important. Solar air collectors are one of these systems that use corrugated and wavy plates to increase their efficiency. In this research, Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) has been used to study the heat transfer and airflow inside a solar air collector that uses a corrugated absorber plate.

Material and Methodology: In this work, the Reynolds number and the geometrical parameters of the corrugated shape on the absorber plate are considered design variables, and the simulation was done in two dimensions with Ansys Fluent 15 software. The Reynolds number changes in the range of 3800 to 18000 and the process of corrugated repeating and corrugated angle with the plate was selected as parameters affecting the geometry of the channel.

Findings: According to the investigations carried out, it has been shown that the best turbulence model is the k-ε RNG model. It was observed that the turbulence created by the corrugated plate leads to an increase in heat transfer within the duct. Although the corrugation of the plate also increases the pressure drop. The current CFD analysis clearly shows that the average Nusselt number and the average friction coefficient increase with the increase in relative pitch and relative height.

Discussion and Conclusion: Optimum performance conditions were calculated using the thermal enhancement factor. The maximum value of 0.98 was obtained for the coefficient of thermal improvement over the range of parameters studied.

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