Experimental Investigation on Heat Transfer Enhancement of Artificially Roughened Solar Air Heater

Abstract

In this article, an absorber plate of solar air heater attached with a combination of opposite apex triangular cross-sectioned rib roughness is experimentally analyzed. A series of experiments are carried out to investigate the turbulent airflow for various rib arrangements. This study aims to find effect of pitch of rib roughness element on the heat and friction properties in solar air heater. The studied parameters are relative roughness height of 0.045 and relative roughness pitch from 5 to 12.5 for Reynolds number range from 3000 to 18,000. Highest enhancement in Nusselt number and friction factor was found to be 3.05 and 4.14 times of smooth duct respectively. Highest thermohydraulic performance (2.02) was recorded at relative roughness pitch of 10. A new heat transfer correlation is also presented in this article for the rib roughened solar air heater. A linear stepwise regression algorithm is used to reduce the resulting data to correlation. The developed correlation accurately predicts all Nusselt number and friction factor data to within ± 6% relative absolute deviation.

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Notes on contributors

Anil Singh Yadav

Anil Singh Yadav is a Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering at IES College of Technology, Bhopal, MP, India. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Madhav Institute of Technology & Science, Gwalior, India. He received his Master’s degree in Thermal Engineering and Ph.D. from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal, India. He has more than 20 years of vast teaching experience. His area of research includes CFD modeling & simulation, heat transfer, and renewable energy. He has published/presented more than hundred research papers to his credit in reputed national and international journals/conferences. He has also published twelve research papers in SCI journals as a ‘First Author’. He has been granted three Indian design patents. His two Indian utility patents have also been published. He is the author of six books. He has registered six Indian copyrights. He is editor of four international journals. He is reviewer of more than hundred international journals. He has expertise in ANSYS Fluent, SOLIDWORKS, AutoCAD, Fusion 360 and MATLAB.

Abhishek Sharma

Abhishek Sharma, a graduate in Mechanical Engineering from Pt. Ravi Shankar Shukla University Raipur, did his Masters in Thermal Engineering from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology Bhopal and his Doctoral degree in Mechanical Engineering from National Institute of Technology Rourkela, India. Presently, he is serving as an Associate Professor in the department of Mechanical Engineering, Manipal University Jaipur, Rajasthan, India. He has been engaged in active research in the field of waste to energy, alternative fuels for IC engine, renewable energy, air pollution etc. He was a Principal Investigator for a research project focused on conversion of waste plastic into liquid fuel, sponsored by Ministry of Human Resource Development, Government of India. He has to his credit around 50 research publications in international peer-reviewed journals, reputed conferences, book chapters and having more than 550 citations with an h-index of 10. He has also been granted two Indian patents and registered two copyrights. Recently, he has filed 3 Indian patents and one Australian patent.