Heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of wavy fin solar air heater

Abstract

A theoretical study was carried out to determine the effect of collector length on the heat transfer and pressure drop characteristics of a wavy finned solar air heater. The flow channel was formed by two transversely positioned wavy fins attached below the absorber plate and the top surface is subjected to uniform heat flux. The effect of mass flow rate and collector length of wavy finned solar air heater was investigated. For the investigated range of parameters, the observations showed that increasing the collector length increases the total loss; useful energy gain and pressure drop but decreases the thermal efficiency. Also, an increase in air outlet temperature has been obtained with the lower mass flow rate and with the loss of minimum pressure drop, For the mass flow rate of 0.0138 kg/s the pressure drops for the wavy fin solar air heater increased from 4.01% to 23.4 % for the increase in collector length from 0.8 m to 6 m. Also, outlet temperature increases with the increase in collector length. Increasing the collector length will be ineffective beyond the mass flow rate of 0.05kg/s for the wavy fin solar air heater.