NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF A SOLAR WATER HEATER FOR ENHANCEMENT IN THERMAL PERFORMANCE

K. Vasudeva Karanth, Madhwesh N, Shiva Kumar, Manjunath M.S

Abstract: Largest commercial application amongst the various solar collectors is the solar flat plate collectors mainly due to its simple design as well as low maintenance cost. Numerical analysis of the solar water heater which involves conduction and convection due to radiation heat transfer using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) as a tool has not been the focus of study so far. It is generally understood that sinusoidal flow passage tends to increase turbulence which in turn increases convective heat transfer. The advantage of using straight absorber tube over sinusoidal absorber tube on the thermal behavior of the solar water heater needs to be explored as a design prescription. In the study presented in this paper it is noted from the experimental and numerical analysis that the straight tube configuration has better performance than that of sinusoidal pipe configuration.

Keywords: Sinusoidal tube, Solar water heater, Convective heat transfer, Computational fluid dynamics.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2015.0403091