Experimental and numerical study of an overlay composite absorber plate material for a solar air heater

Abstract

Abstract The research in this paper is a sequel of an earlier work by the author in which experimental and CFD results were compared for an absorber plate made of iron with and without fins for two flow rates. The research yielded a good comparative result between the experimental and computational process for an optimized flow rate and the effect of the fins. The objective of this paper is to verify the effect of the overlay composite absorber plate material on a solar air heater through experimental and computational fluid dynamics. The experimental setup consists of an absorber plate as an overlay composite of aluminum and copper for enhanced heat transfer. Experiments and CFD analysis were done in three configurations. In configuration one, only the aluminum absorber plate with fins was considered. In configuration two, the overlay composite was considered with copper on the top and aluminum at the bottom as fins, and in configuration three, the overlay composite was considered with aluminum at the top and copper at the bottom as fins. A transient 8 hours CFD analysis was carried out using these configurations. While validating the results it was found that the overlay absorber plate Cu-Al was capable of generating a high outlet temperature Max of 88 °C and capable of generating 83 °C air for 5 hours and had good thermal efficiency when compared to the other materials in the other two configuration. It was found that experimental and computational analysis were in very close agreement, and the margin of error between the experimental and computational processes was less than 8 %.