The enhancement of the thermal and thermo-hydraulic performance of a semi-circular solar air collector (SCSAC) is numerically investigated using porous semi-circular obstacles made of metal foam with and without longitudinal porous Y-shaped fins. Two 10 and 40 PPI porous material samples are examined. Three-dimensional models are built to simulate the performance of SCSAC: model (I) with clear air passage; model (II) with only metal foam obstacles, and model (III) with metal foam obstacles as well as porous Y-fins. COMSOL Multiphysics software version 6.2 based on finite element methodology is employed. A conjugate heat transfer with a (k-ε) turbulence model is selected to simulate both heat transfer and fluid flow across the entire computational domain. However, only the local thermal non-equilibrium (LTNE) model of heat transfer is applied in the porous regions. The findings demonstrated that adding metal foam as the novel proposed configuration particularity of model (III) may enhance the thermal efficiency by about 30%, and the outlet air temperature may rise to 7% compared to other models. Also, the performance evaluation factor of this model is greater than one in all cases. Additionally, the thermal enhancement is accomplished by occupying only 5% of the air passage volume, thereby including an associated pressure drop of minimal magnitude.
This work is an experimental investigation for single basin-single slope solar still coupled with an evacuated tube solar collector. The work is carried out under the climatic conditions of Baghdad city (33.2456º North and East latitude, 44.3337º longitude) through certain days of the months of the year 2019 to study the impact of using evacuated tube solar collector on the daily productivity and efficiency under the outdoors climatic conditions. It was found that using the evacuated tube solar collector increase daily productivity from 2.175 kg/ to 2.95 kg/ for 9 hours (35.63 %) for clear days, also an enhancement about 10.97 % in daily efficiency.
Sloped solar chimney system is a solar chimney power plant with a sloped collector. Practically, the sloped collector can function as a chimney, then the chimney height can be reduced and the construction cost would be reduced.The continuity, Naver-stockes, energy and radiation transfer equations have been solved and carried out by Fluent software. The governing equations are solved for incompressible, 3-D, steady, turbulent standard model with Boussiuesq approximation to develop for the sloped solar chimney system in this study and evaluate the performance of solar chimney power plant in Baghdad city of Iraq numerically by Fluent (14) software with orking conditions such as solar radiation intensity (30
... Show MoreIn 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%
... Show MoreThis paper presents the design, construction and investigates an experimental study of a parabolic Trough Solar Collector (PTSC). It is constructed of multi – piece glass mirror to form the parabolic reflector (1.8 m ? 2.8 m) its form were checked with help of a laser and carbon steel rectangular as receiver. Sun tracker has been developed (using two – axis) to track solar PTSC according to the direction of beam propagation of solar radiation. Using synthetic oil as a heat transfer its capability to heat transfer and load high temperature (?400 oc). The storage tank is fabricated with stainless steel of size 50 L. The experimental tests have been carried out in Baghdad climatic conditions (33.3o N, 44.4o E) during selective days of the
... Show MoreAn experimental and theoretical study has been done to investigate the thermal performance of different types of air solar collectors, In this work air solar collector with a dimensions of (120 cm x90 cm x12 cm) , was tested under climate condition of Baghdad city with a (43° tilt angel) by using the absorber plate (1.45 mm thickness, 115 cm height x 84 cm width), which was manufactured from iron painted with a black matt.
The experimental test deals with five types of absorber:-
Conventional smooth flat plate absorber , Finned absorber , Corrugated absorber plate, Iron wire mesh on absorber And matrix of porous media on absorber .
The hourly and average efficiency of the collectors
... Show MoreThe present paper deals with experimental investigation of the performance of air cooled split air conditioner, with evaporative water mist pre cooling to increase the cooling capacity and reduce the consumption power under hot and dry climate. This investigation considers how the performance can be enhanced by using water mist to pre-cool ambient air entering the condensers by adiabatic cooling process which depends on the ambient air wet bulb temperature; as well the condensing temperature and condensing pressure will be decreased accordingly. So the cooling capacity would be increased and consumption power would be decreased, consequently the energy ratio, EER would be improved. The performance of air cooled air conditioner with water
... Show MoreIn the present work, the thermo-fluid characteristics of a heat exchanger formed of helical coiled tubes immersed in cold water are investigated experimentally. Two types of helical coiled tube are tested, a conventional vertical single helical coiled tube and a new triple vertical helical coiled tube in parallel connection called as meshed coils. The effect of hot water flow rates inside the tubes (ranges from 2.67 to 7.08 l/min), and its inlet temperatures (namely 50, 60, 70 and 80 °C) are investigated. The experimental results show that increasing the flow rate inside the meshed coils leads to decrease the temperature difference between inlet and outlet. An enhancement of heat transfer for meshed coils compared to single coil has been n
... Show MoreIn this work, a convex lens concentrating solar collector is designed and manufactured locally by using 10 convex lenses (concentrator) of a diameter 10cm and one Copper absorber tube of a diameter 12.5mm and 1mm in thickness 1m length. Two axes manual Tracking system also constructed to track the sun continuously in two directions. The experiments are made on 17th of May 2015 in climatic conditions of Baghdad. The experimental data are fed to a computer program to solve the thermal performing equation, to find efficiency and actual useful energy. Then this data is used in numerical CFD software for three different absorber diameters (12.5 mm, 18.75 mm and 25 mm). From the results that obtained the maximum the
... Show MoreThe thermal and electrical performance of different designs of air based hybrid photovoltaic/thermal collectors is investigated experimentally and theoretically. The circulating air is used to cool PV panels and to collect the absorbed energy to improve their performance. Four different collectors have been designed, manufactured and instrumented namely; double PV panels without cooling (model I), single duct double pass collector (model II), double duct single pass (model III), and single duct single pass (model IV) . Each collector consists of: channel duct, glass cover, axial fan to circulate air and two PV panel in parallel connection. The temperature of the upper and lower surfaces of PV panels, air temper
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