Finite volume numerical analysis of diamond and zinc nanoparticles performance in a water-based trapezium direct absorber solar collector with buoyancy effects

Kuharat, S; Beg, OA; Beg, TA; Vasu, B; Leonard, HJ; Kadir, A; Jouri, W; Umavathi, JC; Gorla, RSR

Abstract

In recent years many nanomaterials have been deployed in solar energy systems. These include both carbon-based (e.g. silicates, diamond, carbon nanotubes) and metallic nanoparticles (gold, silver, copper, tin, zinc etc). By combining these nanoparticles with water base fluids, to create nanofluids, improved performance can be achieved in direct absorber solar collector (DASC) systems. In the current work, motivated by these developments, a finite volume code (ANSYS FLUENT ver 19.1) is employed to simulate the relative performance of both carbon-based (i.e. diamond) and metal-based (i.e. zinc) nanoparticles in a trapezium geometry. The Tiwari-Das formulation is implemented to compute viscosity, thermal conductivity and heat capacity properties for diamond-water and zinc-water nanofluids at different volume fractions. Steady state nanofluid buoyancy-driven incompressible laminar Newtonian convection is examined. The SIMPLE solver is deployed, and residual iterations utilized for convergence monitoring. Mesh independence is included. Verification with the penalty finite element computations of Natarajan et al. (Int. J. of Heat and Mass Transfer, 51:747-756, 2008) for the case of a Newtonian viscous fluid (zero volume fraction) is also conducted and excellent correlation achieved. Isotherm, streamline and local Nusselt number plots are presented for different volume fractions, sloping wall inclinations (both negative and positive slopes are considered) and Rayleigh numbers. Vortex structure and thermal distributions are shown to be modified considerably with these parameters. Overall diamond achieves higher heat transfer rates while more stable velocity distributions are produced with zinc nanoparticles. These trends are amplified at higher volume fractions. The present computations may be further generalized to the three-dimensional case although this requires significantly greater mesh densities and compilation times.

Citation

Kuharat, S., Beg, O., Beg, T., Vasu, B., Leonard, H., Kadir, A., …Gorla, R. (2022). Finite volume numerical analysis of diamond and zinc nanoparticles performance in a water-based trapezium direct absorber solar collector with buoyancy effects. In A. Soni, D. Tripathi, J. Sahariya, & K. Sharma (Eds.), Energy Conversion and Green Energy Storage. Boca Raton, Florida, USA: CRC Press

• Online Publication Date: Sep 14, 2022
• Publication Date: Sep 14, 2022
• Deposit Date: Oct 6, 2022
• Book Title: Energy Conversion and Green Energy Storage
• ISBN: 9781003258209
• Publisher URL: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9781003258209-6/finite-volume-numerical-analysis-diamond-zinc-nanoparticles-performance-water-based-trapezium-direct-absorber-solar-collector-buoyancy-effects-sireetorn-kuharat-anwar-b%C3%A9g-henry-leona