Exploration Of Key Approaches to Enhance Evacuated Tube Solar Collector Efficiency

Abstract

This research is carried out to investigate and examine the critical benefits and significant contributions of integrating nanoparticles into the ETSC system to enhance the thermal efficiency, thermal performance, temperature out, and energy storage of the ETSC. The Simcenter STAR-CCM+ 2022.1 software package implemented numerical analysis and thermal simulations. Further, a comparative analysis is conducted on two case studies to validate the critical role and contributions of employing the aluminum oxide nanomaterial in the solar collector system to enhance its thermal efficiency and improve its thermal performance and heat transfer, including (1) conventional ETSC and (2) ETSC with Al2O3. According to the numerical analysis and comparative study findings, the results of this research revealed that employing and adding the aluminum oxide nanomaterial into the ETSC system had contributed to several beneficial impacts and significant advantages. In addition, using Al2O3 achieved enhancements in the thermal efficiency, increases in the outlet collector’s temperature, improvements in the rate of heat flux of the pipes, the tube inside the collector, heat transfer of the hot water storage tank, and a rise in the temperature gradient the hot water temperature increased from (between 44.3 and 74.8 ºC) to (between 49.6-80.3 ºC). Besides, the velocity of the water flow inside the solar collector in the second case in which the aluminum oxide nanoparticles are used was higher due to the absorption of further solar radiation and thermal energy, which resulted in a considerable increase in the kinetic energy of water molecules from 0.01 to 0.07 m/s. Also, it was found that the velocity directions and profile were slightly more turbulent in the second case than the conventional solar collector due to more thermal energy absorbed and stored in the ETSC from solar radiation.