Solar collectors, in general, are utilized to convert the solar energy into heat energy, where it is employed to generate electricity. The non-concentrating solar collector with a circular shape was adopted in the present study. Ambient air is heated under a translucent roof where buoyant air is drawn from outside periphery towards the collector center (tower base). The present study is aimed to predict and visualize the thermal-hydrodynamic behavior for airflow under inclined roof of the solar air collector, SAC. Three-dimensional of the SAC model using the re-normalization group, RNG, k−ε turbulence viscus model is simulated. The simulation was carried out by using ANSYS-FLUENT 14.5. The simulation

High-resolution imaging of celestial bodies, especially the sun, is essential for understanding dynamic phenomena and surface details. However, the Earth's atmospheric turbulence distorts the incoming light wavefront, which poses a challenge for accurate solar imaging. Solar granulation, the formation of granules and intergranular lanes on the sun's surface, is important for studying solar activity. This paper investigates the impact of atmospheric turbulence-induced wavefront distortions on solar granule imaging and evaluates, both visually and statistically, the effectiveness of Zonal Adaptive Optics (AO) systems in correcting these distortions. Utilizing cellular automata for granulation modelling and Zonal AO correction methods,

In this paper, 3D simulation of the global coronal magnetic field, which use observed line of sight component of the photosphere magnetic field from (MDI/SOHO) was carried out using potential field model. The obtained results, improved the theoretical models of the coronal magnetic field, which represent a suitable lower boundary conditions (Bx, By, Bz) at the base of the linear force-free and nonlinear force free models, provides a less computationally expensive method than other models. Generally, very high speed computer and special configuration is needed to solve such problem as well as the problem of viewing the streamline of the magnetic field. For high accuracy special mathematical treatment was adopted to solve the computation comp

In this paper, an experimental study of the thermal performance for hybrid solar air conditioning system was carried out, to investigate system suitability for the hot climate in Iraq. The system consists of vapor compression unit combined with evacuated tube solar collector and liquid storage tank. A three-way valve was installed after the compressor to control the direction flow of the refrigerant, either to the storage tank or directly to the condenser. The performance parameters were collected by data logger to display and record in the computer by using LabVIEW software. The results show that the average coefficient of performance of hybrid solar air conditioning system (R=1) was about 2.42 to 2.77 and the average p

Artificial roughness applied to a Solar Air Heater (SAH) absorber plate is a popular technique for increasing its total thermal efficiency (ηt−th). In this paper, the influence of geometrical parameters of V-down ribs attached below the corrugated absorbing plate of a SAH on the ηt−th was examined. The impacts of key roughness parameters, including relative pitch p/e (6–12), relative height e/D (0.019–0.043), angles of attack α (30–75°), and Re (1000–20,000), were examined under real weather conditions. The SAH ηt−th roughened by V-down ribs was predicted using an in-house developed conjugate heat-transfer numerical model. The maximum SAH ηt−th was shown to be 78.8% as predicted under the steady-state condition

In this work, a novel single-slope solar distillator of floating perforated absorber inserted with wicks (cotton ribbons), and a stepped distillator are designed and manufactured with the aim of developing the conventional distillator. They are examined experimentally at Baghdad, Iraq (33.3°N Latitude, 44.4°E Longitude) in order to enhance the freshwater productivity and the efficiency of the conventional distillator. Results showed that the daily productivity and efficiency of the stepped distillator are higher than that for conventional solar distillator by 30% and 36.19% respectively. The daily productivity and thermal efficiency for the distillator with the floating absorber are higher than that for the conventional distillator by 16%

Heat transfer process and fluid flow in a solar chimney used for natural ventilation are investigated numerically in the present work. Solar chimney was tested by selecting different positions of absorber namely: at the back side, front side, and at the middle of the air gap. CFD analysis based on finite volume method is used to predict the thermal performance, and air flow in two dimensional solar chimney under unsteady state condition, to identify the effect of different parameters such as solar radiation. Results show that a solar chimney with absorber at the middle of the air gap gives better ventilation performance. A comparison between the numerical and previous experimental results shows fair agreement.

This paper includes an experimental study of hydrogen mass flow rate and inlet hydrogen pressure effect on the fuel cell performance. Depending on the experimental results, a model of fuel cell based on artificial neural networks is proposed. A back propagation learning rule with the log-sigmoid activation function is adopted to construct neural networks model. Experimental data resulting from 36 fuel cell tests are used as a learning data. The hydrogen mass flow rate, applied load and inlet hydrogen pressure are inputs to fuel cell model, while the current and voltage are outputs. Proposed model could successfully predict the fuel cell performance in good agreement with actual data. This work is extended to developed fuel cell feedback