Performance Analysis and Parametric Study of a Natural Convection Solar Air Heater With In-built Oil Storage

This paper presents the thermal performance of the proposed double flow natural convection solar air heater with in-built liquid (oil) sensible heat storage. Unused engine oil was used as thermal energy storage medium due to its good heat retaining capacity even at high temperatures without evaporation. The performance evaluation was carried out for a day of the month March for the climatic conditions of Nagpur (India). A self reliant computational model was developed using computational tool as C++. The program developed was self reliant and compute the performance parameters for any day of the year and would be used for major cities in India. The effect of change in storage oil quantity and the inclination (tilt angle) on the overall efficiency of the solar air heater was studied. The performance was tested initially at different storage oil quantities as 25, 50, 75 and 100 l for a plate spacing of 0.04 m with an inclination of 36o. It has been found that the solar air heater gives the best performance at a storage oil quantity of 50 l. The performance of the proposed solar air heater is further tested for various combinations of storage oil quantity (50, 75 and 100 l) and the inclination (0o, 15o, 30o, 45o, 60o, 75o, 90o). It has been found that the proposed solar air heater with in-built oil storage shows its best performance for the combination of 50 l storage oil quantity and 60o inclination. Finally the results of the parametric study was also presented in the form of graphs carried out for a fixed storage oil quantity of 25 l, plate spacing of 0.03 m and at an inclination of 36o to study the behaviour of various heat transfer and fluid flow parameters of the solar air heater.

[1]  S. P Sukhatme,et al.  Solar Energy: Principles of Thermal Collection and Storage , 2009 .

[2]  Hassan E.S. Fath,et al.  Thermal performance of a simple design solar air heater with built-in thermal energy storage system , 1995 .

[3]  M. Mittal,et al.  Optimal thermohydraulic performance of a wire mesh packed solar air heater , 2006 .

[4]  Tanongkiat Kiatsiriroat,et al.  Performance analysis of a direct-contact thermal energy storage-solidification , 2000 .

[5]  Varun,et al.  A review on roughness geometry used in solar air heaters , 2007 .

[6]  M. Ozisik.  Heat Transfer: A Basic Approach , 1984 .

[7]  A. Tamimi.  Modeling and Testing of a Thermosiphon Solar Air-Heater , 1988 .

[8]  Hassan E.S. Fath,et al.  Transient analysis of thermosyphon solar air heater with built-in latent heat thermal energy storage system , 1995 .

[9]  S. C. Solanki,et al.  Heat transfer and friction factor correlations for packed bed solar air heater for a low porosity system , 2003 .

[10]  A. El-sebaii,et al.  Parametric study of a solar air heater with and without thermal storage for solar drying applications , 2000 .

[11]  Dilip Jain,et al.  Performance evaluation of an inclined multi-pass solar air heater with in-built thermal storage on deep-bed drying application , 2004 .

[12]  S. O. Enibe,et al.  Thermal analysis of a natural circulation solar air heater with phase change material energy storage , 2003 .

[13]  H. P. Garg,et al.  Economic design of a rock bed storage device for storing solar thermal energy , 1995 .

[14]  Somchart Soponronnarit,et al.  Solar drying in Thailand , 1995 .

[15]  A. El-sebaii,et al.  Thermal performance of a packed bed double-pass solar air heater , 2007 .

[16]  Ashmore Mawire,et al.  Experimental and simulated temperature distribution of an oil-pebble bed thermal energy storage system with a variable heat source , 2009 .

[17]  Dilip Jain,et al.  Modeling the system performance of multi-tray crop drying using an inclined multi-pass solar air heater with in-built thermal storage , 2005 .

[18]  M. S. Sodha,et al.  On the boundary conditions applicable in the analysis of a matrix air heater , 1984 .