Enhancement of heat transfer in a combined solar air heating and water heater system

P. Ganesh Kumar, K. Balaji, D. Sakthivadivel, V.S. Vigneswaran, R. Velraj and Sung Chul Kim

Energy, 2021, vol. 221, issue C

Abstract: This paper presents an innovative hybrid system that serves the dual purpose of heating air and water simultaneously. To achieve an enhancement in thermal performance, the rectangular aluminum duct’s inner surface in the air heater and the copper absorber plate in the water heater was roughened using a pressurized shot-blasting technique. Furthermore, the convective heat transfer performance was enhanced using solar glycol (SG) with multi-walled carbon nanotube (MWCNT)-based nanofluids. The performance of this novel combined system for a total collector area of 2 m2 was investigated experimentally. The SG/MWCNT-based nanofluid was prepared by adding a surfactant (i.e., gum arabic) at concentrations of 0.1 and 0.2 vol %. Based on the results of the experimental investigation, it was inferred that the collector efficiency is directly proportional to the volume percentage of the nanomaterials. An average temperature difference of 14.54 °C was achieved in the solar collector, whereas a maximum temperature of 18.32 °C was obtained for 0.2 vol % of MWCNT at a mass flow rate of 0.01 kg/s. Moreover, the maximum thermal efficiency of 51.03% was attained for a 0.2 vol % SG/MWCNT-based nanofluid at a mass flow rate of 0.01 kg/s.

Keywords: Shot-blasting; Solar water heater; Solar air heater; Multiwall carbon nanotube; Pumping power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360544221000542
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:221:y:2021:i:c:s0360544221000542

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2021.119805

Access Statistics for this article

Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser

More articles in Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().