Heat Transfer Investigation of a Flat Plate Solar Collector

Abstract

Because of the low value of the convective heat transfer coefficient between the absorber plate and the air, the thermal efficiency of a solar air heater is greatly reduced, resulting in high absorber plate temperatures and large heat losses to the surrounding environment. The analysis of heat transmission in a solar air heater is presented in this research, which makes use of Computational Fluid Dynamics. An investigation is conducted into the effect of the Reynolds number on the Nusselt number and friction factor. It is necessary to study and visually depict the nature of the flow across the duct of a solar air heater, which is done using a commercial finite volume software. The findings of the CFD simulations are found to be in excellent agreement with the experimental results. Because of this, the average Nusselt number increases as the Reynolds number grows, and the average friction factor reduces as the Reynolds number increases as well.