 Influence of channel depth on the performance of solar air heatersWei Sun, Jie Ji and Wei He Energy, 2010, vol. 35, issue 10, 4201-4207 Abstract: In the design of solar air heaters (SAHs), channel depth is a principal variable to be fixed. In this paper, the effect of the channel depth on the energy gain of type I and type III SAHs has been investigated by computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations. Laminar model and k–ω turbulence model of Wilcox are used for the prediction of flow and temperature field in SAHs. Our study shows that the heat transfer corresponding to the temperature distribution across the channel in SAH varies greatly with the change of channel depth. Based on the first and second laws of thermodynamics, the optimal channel depths for type I and type III SAHs with black-painted absorber are suggested as 10 mm. It is found that with selective coating, the absorber plate should be further from the cover glazing in order to prevent excessive convective heat loss, the distance is better of no less than 20 mm. In type III SAH, air flows in two channels above and below the absorber plate, the depth ratio of up channel to down channel should be no less than 1. Keywords: Solar air heater; CFD simulation; Channel depth; Heat transfer; Exergy (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:energy:v:35:y:2010:i:10:p:4201-4207 DOI: 10.1016/j.energy.2010.07.006 Access Statistics for this article Energy is currently edited by Henrik Lund and Mark J. Kaiser More articles in Energy from Elsevier |
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