Abstract
In the present work, phase change material (paraffin wax) integrated double glazed rectangular finned solar air heater is investigated numerically using implicit discretization scheme. A MATLAB code is developed, capable of providing the solution for unsteady governing energy equations for each element of solar air heater and air flow. Numerical results are validated with published experimental results of a flat absorber plate collector design with PCM (Moradi et al. in Exp Thermal Fluid Sci 89:41–49, 2017 [1]). The idea of integration of PCM and fins with solar air heater is to provide thermal energy backup during off-sunshine hours and increase heat discharging rate of PCM, respectively. The average incident global radiation is the function of time and maximum incident radiation is taken as 960 W/m2. Moreover, a correlation is developed to predict the ambient temperature as reported in Moradi et al. (Exp Thermal Fluid Sci 89:41–49, 2017 [1]) as a function of time. The results showed that the thermal backup of PCM lasted for about 12 h after sunset almost for all selected numbers of fins. The maximum outlet air temperature for 5, 15 and 25 fins is obtained as 42 ℃, 47.16 ℃ and 51.25 ℃, respectively, at mass flow rate of 0.0128 kg/s. Whereas, the maximum instant thermal efficiency for 5, 15, and 25 fins is obtained as 35.867%, 49.375%, and 58.198%, respectively.
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Negi, B.S., Singh, S., Negi, S. (2021). Multiphase Numerical Modeling of PCM Integrated Solar Collector. In: Pandey, K., Misra, R., Patowari, P., Dixit, U. (eds) Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering. Lecture Notes in Mechanical Engineering. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7711-6_84
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-7711-6_84
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