Numerical investigation of solar flat plate collector using different working fluids

Abstract

This investigation aims to determine the best working fluid among mineral oil, Dowtherm, and water, for a solar flat plate collector consisting of fifteen tubes by considering two different lengths of collector tubes using computational fluid dynamics. The aim is to find the best working fluid for industrial use in solar thermal technologies. The geometry and mesh were created and simulated using ‘Ansys-Fluent' software. The simulation was carried out at five different flow rates. The effect of mass flow rate on the exit temperature for each working fluid was determined. Also, the effect of the length of the collector on the exit temperature in the case of mineral oil was observed and reported. The temperature at the exit of the tubes was the mainly studied parameter. The maximum temperature achieved was 448.305 °C for mineral oil at the mass flow rate of 5 × 10⁻⁵ kg/s was 448.305°C by SFPC. The results showed that the exit temperature decreased with increasing flow rate and decreasing collector tube length. Compared with water, mineral oil and Dowtherm prove to be better fluids due to their low specific heat capacity, which could be considered for use on an industrial scale.

KEYWORDS:

• Solar flat plate collector
• mineral oil
• dowtherm
• water
• computational fluid dynamics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).