Performance Enhancement of a Variable Cross-Sectional Area Square Pipe Solar Heater

Abstract

Recently, solar energy has become most favorable source of energy. It is sustainable and environmentally friendly, and one of the most common application of solar energy is the solar water heater, which has a wide commercial and domestic applications. To enhance the performance of this device, many modifications are recommended. The enhancements may involve changes in pipe shape or materials or in absorber plate manufacturing, or sometimes by using a thermal storage tank to maintain heating. In this study, a variable cross-sectional area pipe is used to enhance heat transfer. Firstly, the vertical length is increased at the outlet to 1.2-1.8 ratios, while the horizontal sides remain constant. Then, for the same ratio, the horizontal sides are varied while the vertical sides remain constant. Finally, both the vertical and horizontal sides are increase. A three-dimensional numerical analysis is used to investigate the conjugated heat transfer and the flow characteristics in the pipe under study for each case. FLUENT ANSYS 17.2 is used to achieve this analysis using finite volume technique. Energy, Navier-Stokes, and continuity equations are solved at constant heat flux condition for a range of Reynolds numbers from 100 to 500. The hydraulic-thermal function ε is adopted in this study. The best increase in ε is 48%, achieved in the case of changes to both vertical and horizontal dimensions at a ratio of 1.8. The lowest percentage of decrease in pressure drop is 9.7%, and the highest temperature difference found is and 45.5% for the same case when compared with the uniform case for Reynolds number of 100. The present work is validated with another study adopting Shah’s empirical relation with a very good agreement.