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Analysis of Solar Air Heater with and without Fins using CFD

Manish Kumar

Abstract


Comprehensive details of the flow field which are obtained using CFD code will help in understanding the fin behavior under different cases and thereby suggest possible modification of solar air heater. In this paper, the preliminary validation of CFD methodology is carried out for selected 3-D cases. The study is then extended to analyze the efficiency of solar air heater for different cases. In each case, a 3-D model of the Solar Air Heater has been created by CAD software and imported into a pre-processor Gambit (of Fluent CFD-code) where computational domain is created for simulating temperature flow around the model. The computational domain is meshed with structured grid. Suitable boundary condition types are assigned and the file is saved as a mesh file. This mesh file is exported to Fluent to perform the CFD analysis and predict the behavior of Solar Air Heater model. The CFD analysis is carried out in two phases to find out the effect of slope angle on the performance of the collector. In phase 1, collector slope angle of 45º was chosen. In the second phase the slope of 24º was selected in light of the optimal solar gain for latitude 24º.


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References


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