Contribution to improving the thermal performances of a solar collector using CFD approach: Solar water heater application

Abstract

In this work, we made a numerical simulation of heat transfer in a pipe of a flat plate solar collector using two forms of the absorber plate (simple, with baffles) in the presence of obstacles on the insulating plate. The flow is unsteady and laminar where the heat exchange between the absorber and working fluid takes place in useful area. The aim is to study the effects of mass flow and the number of baffles as well as their height on flow and heat transfer characteristics. Several CFD simulations were carried out in order to determine the influencing parameters allowing better performances of the collector and ensuring a good homogeneity of the temperature at the channel outlet. It is shown that when the number and height of baffles increase and the mass flow decreases the mean outlet temperature and the heat transfer rate between fluid and absorber plate are improved.

Keywords:

• Absorber plate
• baffles
• fluent
• solar collector
• solar radiation