Enhancing thermal and exergetic performance of solar air heating systems with PCM-integrated finned obstacles

Vahid Madadi Avargani, Hiwa Abdlla Maarof and Sohrab Zendehboudi

Energy, 2025, vol. 326, issue C

Abstract: This research investigates a solar air heater (SAH) design incorporating hollow cylindrical obstacles with fins and phase change materials (HCOF-PCM). CFD simulations using COMSOL software analyze the system's thermal performance under time-varying solar radiation conditions. Compared to the baseline configurations of hollow cylindrical obstacles with fins (HCOF) and without fins (HCO), which achieve time-averaged thermal efficiencies of 47.22% and 36.14% respectively, the HCOF-PCM design demonstrates enhanced performance with a time-averaged thermal efficiency of 55.70%. The exergetic analysis reveals that the HCOF-PCM system attains a time-averaged exergy efficiency of 3.46% at 0.045 kg/s air mass flow rate, representing a 34.62% improvement over HCOF and 128.01% over HCO. The time-averaged heat transfer coefficient in the HCOF-PCM configuration reaches 8.74 W/m2.K, showing a 10.55% increase compared to HCO. Parametric sensitivity analysis indicate that increasing obstacle diameter from 1.0 cm to 3.5 cm enhances daily time-averaged energy and exergy efficiencies from 46.72% to 57.16% and from 2.54% to 3.73%, respectively. The obstacle height-to-collector ratio demonstrates significant influence, with time-averaged energy efficiency increasing from 44.45% to 64.16% and exergy efficiency from 2.27% to 4.46% as the ratio varies from 0.1 to 0.9.

Keywords: Hollow cylindrical finned-obstacles (HCOF); Solar air heater (SAH) performance enhancement; Computational fluid dynamics (CFD); Energy and exergy analyses; Thermal energy storage and management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:326:y:2025:i:c:s0360544225017918

DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2025.136149

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