Experimental investigation of thermal performance of a double-flow solar air heater having aluminium cans

This study experimentally investigates a device for inserting an absorbing plate made of aluminium cans into the double-pass channel in a flat-plate solar air heater (SAH). This method substantially improves the collector efficiency by increasing the fluid velocity and enhancing the heat-transfer co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Renewable energy 2009-11, Vol.34 (11), p.2391-2398
Main Authors: Ozgen, Filiz, Esen, Mehmet, Esen, Hikmet
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accumulators
Air heaters
Aluminium
Aluminium cans
Aluminum
Applied sciences
Cans
Channels
Collectors
Double-pass flow
Energy
Equipments, installations and applications
Exact sciences and technology
Experimental
Natural energy
Proposals
Solar air heaters
Solar energy
Solar thermal conversion
Thermal efficiency
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Summary:This study experimentally investigates a device for inserting an absorbing plate made of aluminium cans into the double-pass channel in a flat-plate solar air heater (SAH). This method substantially improves the collector efficiency by increasing the fluid velocity and enhancing the heat-transfer coefficient between the absorber plate and air. These types of collectors had been designed as a proposal to use aluminium materials to build absorber plates of SAHs at a suitable cost. The collector had been covered with a 4-mm single glass plate, in order to reduce convective loses to the atmosphere. Three different absorber plates had been designed and tested for experimental study. In the first type (Type I), cans had been staggered as zigzag on absorber plate, while in Type II they were arranged in order. Type III is a flat plate (without cans). Experiments had been performed for air mass flow rates of 0.03 kg/s and 0.05 kg/s. The highest efficiency had been obtained for Type I at 0.05 kg/s. Also, comparison between the thermal efficiency of the SAH tested in this study with the ones reported in the literature had been presented, and a good agreement had been found.
ISSN:0960-1481
1879-0682
DOI:10.1016/j.renene.2009.03.029