Simulation of a nanofluid-based annular solar collector

Kuharat, S; Beg, OA

Abstract

A numerical study of convective heat transfer in an annular pipe solar collector system is conducted. The inner tube contains pure water and the annular region contains nanofluid. Three-dimensional steady-state incompressible laminar flow comprising water-based nanofluid containing a variety of metallic nanoparticles (copper oxide, aluminium oxide and titanium oxide nanoparticles) is examined. The Tiwari-Das model is deployed for which thermal conductivity, specific heat capacity and viscosity of the nanofluid suspensions is evaluated as a function of solid nanoparticle volume fraction. Radiative heat transfer is also incorporated using the ANSYS solar flux and Rosseland radiative models. The ANSYS FLUENT finite volume code (version 18.1) is employed to simulate the thermo-fluid characteristics. Mesh-independence tests are conducted. The influence of volume fraction on temperature, velocity, pressure contours is computed and visualized. Copper oxide nanofluid is observed to achieve the best temperature enhancement. Temperature contours at crosssections of the annulus are also computed.

Citation

Kuharat, S., & Beg, O. (2018, August). Simulation of a nanofluid-based annular solar collector. Poster presented at ICHTFM 2018 : 20th International Conference on Heat Transfer and Fluid Mechanics, Istanbul, Turkey

• Presentation Conference Type: Poster
• Conference Name: ICHTFM 2018 : 20th International Conference on Heat Transfer and Fluid Mechanics
• Conference Location: Istanbul, Turkey
• Start Date: Aug 16, 2018
• End Date: Aug 17, 2018
• Acceptance Date: Jul 20, 2018
• Deposit Date: Jul 23, 2018
• Publicly Available Date: Aug 18, 2018
• Publisher URL: https://waset.org/conference/2018/08/istanbul/ICHTFM
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference