Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013)
I. INTRODUCTION Solar energy is the most considerable energy source in the world. Sun, which is 1.495x1011 (m) far from the earth and has a diameter of 1.39x109 (m), would emit approximately 1353 (W/m2) on to a surface perpendicular to rays, if there was no atmospheric layer. The world receives 170 trillion (KW) solar energy and 30% of this energy is reflected back to the space, 47% is transformed to low temperature heat energy, 23% is used for evaporation/rainfall cycle in the Biosphere and less than 0.5% is used in the kinetic energy of the wind, waves and photosynthesis of plants.
Solar energy systems consist of many parts. The most important part of these systems is the solar collector where the heat transfer from sun to absorber and absorber to fluid occurs. In order to affect the performance of these systems, generally modifications on solar collectors are performed. With the rapid development in civilization, man has increasingly become dependent on natural resources to satisfy his needs. Drying fruits and vegetables such as grapes, pepper, pawpaw, etc is one of those indispensable processes that require natural resources in the form of fuels. Solar dryer is fast becoming a preferred method of drying fruits, food grains considering the potential of saving significant amounts of conventional fuel. The major factor that limits the solar energy for drying application is that it is a cyclic time dependent energy source. Therefore, solar systems require energy storage to provide energy during the night and overcast periods. In addition, one of the major requirements in using solar energy for drying application is the development of a suitable drying unit, which should be fast and energy efficient[1]. Solar energy collectors are special kind of heat exchangers that transform solar radiation energy to internal energy of the transport medium. The major component of any solar system is the solar collector. Of all the solar thermal collectors, the flat plate collectors though produce lower temperatures, have the advantage of being simpler in design, having lower maintenance and lower cost. To obtain maximum amount of solar energy of minimum cost the flat plate solar air heaters with thermal storage have been developed. Solar air heater is type of solar collector which is extensively used in many applications such as residential, industrial and agricultural fields.[2] Solar collectors are the key component of active solarheating systems. They gather the sun's energy, transform its radiation into heat, then transfer that heat to a fluid (usually water or air). The solar thermal energy can be used in solar water-heating systems, solar pool heaters, and solar spaceheating systems.
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III. NUMERICAL S IMULATION B Y SOFTWARE Computational system dynamics is the analysis of the systems involving fluid flow, heat transfer and associated phenomenon such as chemical reactions by means of computer-based simulation. The technique is very powerful and spans a wide range of industrial and non-industrial applications areas. Some examples are: aerodynamics of aircrafts and vehicles, hydrodynamics of ships, combustion, turbo machinery, electrical and electronic engineering, chemical process engineering, external and internal environment of buildings, marine engineering, environmental engineering, hydrology and oceanography, metrology, biomedical engineering etc. from the 1960s onwards, the aerospace industry has integrated CFD technique into design, R & D and manufacture of aircrafts and jet engines. More recently the methods have been applied to the design of internal combustion engines, combustion chambers of gas turbines and furnaces. Furthermore, motor manufacturers now routinely predict drag forces, under bonnet airflow and the in-car environment with CFD. Increasingly CFD is becoming a vital component in the design of industrial products and processes. The ultimate aim of development in the CFD field is to provide a capability comparable to other CAE (ComputerAided Engineering) tools such as stress analysis codes.
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d. The unstructured grid which is created then imported in ANSYS FLUENT software and the experimental conditions are used while simulating the solar air collector. e. The model was defined by using 3D segregated solver with steady condition, energy equation, and K-epsilon of viscous model. f. The fluid chosen to simulate solar collector is air. The air properties used in this simulation is shown in table no.1 g. The boundary conditions used in this simulation are shown in table no.2 and 3. h. After setting all boundary conditions in fluent software, to solve the numerical equations the initialization by inlet is to be done. i. To visualize the residuals of iterations verses convergence limit, the residual monitor is set to be in ON state condition. j. To get the final results the numbers of iterations are set around 10000. The results for these simulations were converged at around 4000 to 6000 iterations. k. As the number of elements are more to get the converged results the time taken for these simulations will be more with single processor. l. Finally after getting the proper converged results the air flow distribution and heat transfer inside the solar air collector is been plotted in the form of Contour plots. m. The outlet temperature is been calculated from ANSYS FLUENT after getting converged results and been compared with the experimental results.
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1. Air is used as working fluid, it is compressible fluid. 2. Problem is considered 3D and steady state. 3. Surface considered in geometry are smooth air flow over it is frictionless. 4. Ambient temperature is considered constant. 5. Flow is assumed to be turbulent. 6. Turbulence specification method of turbulent intensity and viscosity ratio with 5 % and 10 respectively. By default these values are can be taken 3 % and 3 respectively or calculated as per model. Here it is been assumed that turbulence will be more so approximately value has been taken by doing trial and error for convergence of model results[5]. IV. RESULT AND D ISCUSSION
Property Mass flow rate of air Density Thermal Conductivity Specific Heat
The results obtained from the CFD analysis of solar flat plate collector are presented in this section. The simulation is carried out for different times of the day i.e.9 am to 5 pm. Then the results obtained by this simulation compared with the experimental results as shown in fig 4. The curves are plotted to indicate experimental and simulated outlet temperatures versus time. From fig 4 it seems that the difference between experimental and simulated outlet temperature for different times is almost 5C.
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9 am 10 am 11 am 12 1 pm 2 pm 3 pm 4 pm 5 pm
55.7 60.5 67.4 76.5 78.1 75.2 68.8 60.3 42 Fig.5(a) Streamlines for temperature distribution
Also the temperature distribution and flow distribution are obtained by CFD simulation. The contour plots obtained for temperature distribution and velocity distribution in streamlines are shown in fig 5(a), 5(b), 5(c), 5(d).
Fig.5(c) Streamlines for velocity distribution
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[2] [3]
[4]
[5] [6]
V. CONCLUSION There is a good agreement between the experimental and simulated results for outlet air temperatures. Although there are some small discrepancies due to some experimental imperfectness matters, we still have a good confidence in the CFD simulation program that can be used in the future for more complex solar collector problem. It is found from the CFD analysis that the flow of air in the solar flat plate collector is not properly distributed. In order to overcome this issue we can introduce baffles at the inlet of collector which improves the efficiency of of solar flat plate collector.
[7]
[8]
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