S. A. Gandjalikhan Nassab; M. Moein Addini
Abstract
In the present paper, the use of radiating gas instead of air inside the cavity of compound parabolic collectors (CPSs) is suggested and verified by numerical analysis. The collector under study has a simple cone shape with flat absorber which is filled with a participating gas such as carbon dioxide ...
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In the present paper, the use of radiating gas instead of air inside the cavity of compound parabolic collectors (CPSs) is suggested and verified by numerical analysis. The collector under study has a simple cone shape with flat absorber which is filled with a participating gas such as carbon dioxide instead of air for the purpose of increasing the thermal performance. In numerical simulation, the continuity, momentum and energy equations for the steady natural convection laminar gas flow in the CPC’s cavity and the conduction equation for glass cover and absorber plate were solved by the finite element method (FEM) using the COMSOL multi-physics. Because of the radiative term in the gas energy equation, the intensity of radiation in participating gas flow should be computed. Toward this end, the radiative transfer equation (RTE) was solved by the discrete ordinate method (DOM), considering both diffuse and collimated radiations. The approximation was employed in calculation of the diffuse part of radiation. It was observed that the gas radiation causes high temperature with more uniform distribution inside the cavity of collector. Also, numerical results reveal more than 3% increase in the rate of heat transfer from absorber surface into working fluid and hence a desired performance for the collector because of the gas radiation effect. Comparison between the present numerical results with theoretical and experimental data reported in the literature showed good consistency.
S. A. Gandjalikhan Nassab; M. Moein Addini
Abstract
A new idea is presented in this paper for improving the performance of solar air heater (SAH) designed for space heating by employing a thin flexible guide winglet. In addition to the role of winglet in pushing the convective airflow toward the heated surface, it behaves as a vortex generator (VG) due ...
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A new idea is presented in this paper for improving the performance of solar air heater (SAH) designed for space heating by employing a thin flexible guide winglet. In addition to the role of winglet in pushing the convective airflow toward the heated surface, it behaves as a vortex generator (VG) due to its vibration by fluid-solid interaction (FSI) that causes flow mixing and breaking thermal boundary layer. In flow simulation, the finite element method (FEM) is employed with considering a two-way strongly-coupled FSI approach at transient condition. Numerical solution of the governing equations, including the continuity, momentum and energy for convective flow and the equation of motion for VG are obtained by COMSOL multi-physics. The well-known model is employed for computation of turbulent stress and heat flux. The present numerical results are validated against the most recent relevant literature. To provide a clear and deep understanding of the proposed concept, extensive comparisons are made between different test cases. Results reveal considerable performance enhancement of SAH with elastic guide winglet compared with clean solar air heater (CSAH), such that 56% increase in the natural airflow rate and 9% decrease in the average absorber temperature is seen because of the flapping winglet. But, the air outlet temperature decreases about 14% due to flapping VG. This study aims to make the proposed SAH as an essential renewable thermal-solar system more efficient and attractive so that this improvement pushes the industrial society toward more sustainable infrastructure.