Nanofluid Based Pipe Flow Analysis in Absorber Pipe of Flat Plate Solar Collector: Effects of Inclination and Porosity

Abstract

Nanofluid applications in solar collectors are an emerging area for enhanced heat transfer resulting in heat gain for domestic and industrial use. In the present work, the performance of a Flat Plate Solar Collector (FPSC) having water-CuO-based nanofluid has been studied. The effect of the tilting angle of cylindrical pipe and porosity of porous material is investigated for this nanofluid-based FPSC. A numerical approach has been adopted to stimulate the governing equations in the tube. The similarity transformation simplifies the model (PDEs) into ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The governing non-dimensional PDEs along with their appropriate boundary conditions are solved numerically using the 4th order Runge-Kutta method cum shooting technique. The impacts of significant and relevant physical parameters and physical quantities of interest are analyzed. From the present study, it is observed that amplification of tilting angle and curvature parameter ameliorates the heat transfer rate while that of porosity parameter controls it effectively. A similar approach can be employed for other solar collectors to assess the heat transfer augmentation by using nanofluids instead of existing fluids.