Thermal performance of aluminum oxide based nanofluids in flat plate solar collector

Abstract

A flat plate solar collector is investigated using nanofluid as heat transfer fluid in this work. Collector aperture area is 0.135 m 2 . Nanofluid is a mixture of alumina-oxide and distilled water. Size of the nanoparticle is 20-30 nm size. Experiments carried out using distilled water and 5.0% of the mass of Al 2 O 3 nanoparticles at single flow rates of 0.051 kg/s and different radiation intensity 600, 800, 1000 W/m 2 . Indoor experiments are conducted with the solar sun simulator. The promising results are obtained around 21% improved heat gain as well as around 20% reduction in the heat input required to provide the same heat requirements. Further, the addition of nanoparticles to the working fluid improves the productivity of the solar collectors with more heat gain.