Computational fluid dynamics-based parametric study on the performance of solar air heater channel

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) plays a prominent role in the design and development of solar air heaters. The previous investigations have lagged in using a radiation model for the solar heat input; instead, most of the researchers simulated a constant heat flux model. Moreover, an extensive study on the geometrical and boundary conditions like confinement and transition length, suction, and blowing effects has not been studied. The present investigation deals with the aforementioned effects on the flow and heat transfer characteristics of the SAH channel, which is designed for residential space heating. The finite volume-based solver Ansys Fluent is used for finding the field variables. The confinement height is varied from 25 to 150 mm, and the transition length is varied from 250 to 1000 mm. The suction and blowing effect is investigated by changing the flow direction across the channel. Even though the temperature rise is less significant with respect to confinement height and transition length, the effective efficiency increases with decreasing channel height and increasing transition length. In general, blowing of air across the channel gives better performance than suction. When comparing them, the influence is less in temperature rise and more in pressure drop for the channel height of 25 mm, whereas the channel height of 150 mm has better influence in temperature rise and less influence in pressure drop.