International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering

Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013)

CFD Analysis of Solar Flat Plate Collector

Prof. P.W.Ingle1, Dr. A. A. Pawar2, Prof. B. D. Deshmukh3, Prof. K. C. Bhosale4
1
Assistant Professor Mechanical Engineering Department, S.R.E.S. College of Engineering, Kopargaon, Maharashtra,
2
Professor Mechanical Engineering Department, RSCOE, Thathwade, Pune,
3,4
Assistant Professor Mechanical Engineering Department, S.R.E.S. College of Engineering, Kopargaon, Maharashtra
Abstract - This thesis attempts to present numerical Solar energy systems consist of many parts. The most
simulation of solar collector developed exclusively for grape important part of these systems is the solar collector where
drying. Solar drying of grapes is much feasible technically and the heat transfer from sun to absorber and absorber to fluid
economically. There has been a remarkable achievement in occurs. In order to affect the performance of these systems,
solar drying of grapes due to sustained research and
generally modifications on solar collectors are performed.
development associated with the adoption of advanced
technologies. With the rapid development in civilization, man has
Simulation is an important tool for design and operation increasingly become dependent on natural resources to
control. For the designer of a drying system, simulation makes satisfy his needs. Drying fruits and vegetables such as
it possible to find the optimum design and operating grapes, pepper, pawpaw, etc is one of those indispensable
parameters. For the designer of the control system, simulation processes that require natural resources in the form of fuels.
provides a means to device control strategies and to analyze Solar dryer is fast becoming a preferred method of drying
the effects of disturbances. fruits, food grains considering the potential of saving
In the present thesis the computational fluid dynamics significant amounts of conventional fuel. The major factor
(CFD) tool has been used to simulate the solar collector for
that limits the solar energy for drying application is that it
better understanding the heat transfer capability. 3D model of
the collector involving air inlet, wavy structured absorber is a cyclic time dependent energy source. Therefore, solar
plate,glass cover plate, and pebble block is modeled by systems require energy storage to provide energy during
ANSYS Workbench and the unstructured grid was created in the night and overcast periods. In addition, one of the major
ANSYS ICEM. The results were obtained by using ANSYS requirements in using solar energy for drying application is
FLUENT software. the development of a suitable drying unit, which should be
The objective of this work is to compare theoretically and fast and energy efficient[1].
experimentally work done with the work done by using Solar energy collectors are special kind of heat
computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tool with respect to flow exchangers that transform solar radiation energy to internal
and temperature distribution inside the solar collector. The
energy of the transport medium. The major component of
outlet temperature of air is compared with experimental
results and there is a good agreement in between them any solar system is the solar collector. Of all the solar
thermal collectors, the flat plate collectors though produce
Keywords—Solar Collector, Drying, Temperature ANSYS, lower temperatures, have the advantage of being simpler in
CFD design, having lower maintenance and lower cost. To
obtain maximum amount of solar energy of minimum cost
I. INTRODUCTION the flat plate solar air heaters with thermal storage have
Solar energy is the most considerable energy source in been developed. Solar air heater is type of solar collector
the world. Sun, which is 1.495x1011 (m) far from the earth which is extensively used in many applications such as
and has a diameter of 1.39x109 (m), would emit residential, industrial and agricultural fields.[2]
approximately 1353 (W/m2) on to a surface perpendicular Solar collectors are the key component of active solar-
to rays, if there was no atmospheric layer. The world heating systems. They gather the sun's energy, transform its
receives 170 trillion (KW) solar energy and 30% of this radiation into heat, then transfer that heat to a fluid (usually
energy is reflected back to the space, 47% is transformed to water or air). The solar thermal energy can be used in solar
low temperature heat energy, 23% is used for water-heating systems, solar pool heaters, and solar space-
evaporation/rainfall cycle in the Biosphere and less than heating systems.
0.5% is used in the kinetic energy of the wind, waves and
photosynthesis of plants.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013)
A. Flat-plate collectors
Flat-plate collectors are the most common solar collector
for solar water-heating systems in homes and solar space
heating. A typical flat-plate collector is an insulated metal
box with a glass or plastic cover (called the glazing) and a
dark-colored absorber plate. These collectors heat liquid or
air at temperatures less than 80°C.
The objective of present study is to perform CFD
simulation of flat plate collector with air flow. The CFD
model was validated with experimental results. Based on
the results of the experiments CFD analysis of air on solar
flat plate collector is carried out. There are certain
limitations for experimental results thus data at each and
every point cannot be obtained, hence CFD is the tool
which handles complex situations where experimental is
not applicable because of limitations and cost effectiveness
problem. The overall aim of this work is to understand the
flow and temperature distribution of air through solar flat Fig.1 Isometric view of Solar flat plate collector
plate collector[3].
III. NUMERICAL S IMULATION B Y SOFTWARE
II. PROBLEM STATEMENT Computational system dynamics is the analysis of the
The objective of present study is to perform CFD systems involving fluid flow, heat transfer and associated
simulation for solar air collector. The results obtained by phenomenon such as chemical reactions by means of
CFD simulation are been validated with experimental computer-based simulation. The technique is very powerful
results.The experimental conditions taken for solar air and spans a wide range of industrial and non-industrial
collector, the same has been used for CFD simulation. The applications areas. Some examples are: aerodynamics of
overall aim of this work is to understand the flow behavior aircrafts and vehicles, hydrodynamics of ships, combustion,
and temperature distribution of air inside the solar collector turbo machinery, electrical and electronic engineering,
and compare the outlet temperature of air with chemical process engineering, external and internal
experimental results. environment of buildings, marine engineering,
The 3D model consisting of the solar air collector environmental engineering, hydrology and oceanography,
involving air inlet, wavy structured absorber plate , glass metrology, biomedical engineering etc. from the 1960s
cover plate, and pebble block is model by ANSYS onwards, the aerospace industry has integrated CFD
Workbench and the unstructured grid was created in technique into design, R & D and manufacture of aircrafts
ANSYS ICEM. The results were obtained by using and jet engines. More recently the methods have been
ANSYS FLUENT software applied to the design of internal combustion engines,
The overall dimension for solar air collector is combustion chambers of gas turbines and furnaces.
2000X1000X130 mm3 with 4 mm thick glass plate which is Furthermore, motor manufacturers now routinely predict
placed at around 126 mm from the top side of the collector. drag forces, under bonnet airflow and the in-car
The wavy structured absorber plate of 2000 mm length, environment with CFD. Increasingly CFD is becoming a
1000 mm wide and 2 mm in thickness. Inlet of solar air vital component in the design of industrial products and
collector is of circular cross section with diameter of 70 processes.
mm. There are two outlets to the solar collector with The ultimate aim of development in the CFD field is to
circular cross section having diameter 60 mm. provide a capability comparable to other CAE (Computer-
Aided Engineering) tools such as stress analysis codes.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013)
The main reason why CFD has lagged behind is the d. The unstructured grid which is created then imported
tremendous complexity of the underlying behavior, which in ANSYS FLUENT software and the experimental
precludes a description of the fluid flows this is at the same conditions are used while simulating the solar air
time economical and sufficiently complete. The availability collector.
of affordable high performance computing hardware and e. The model was defined by using 3D segregated solver
the introduction of user friendly interference have led to a with steady condition, energy equation, and K-epsilon
recent upsurge of interest and CFD is poised to make an of viscous model.
entry into the wider industrial community in the 1990s. f. The fluid chosen to simulate solar collector is air. The
Clearly the investment costs of a CFD capability are not air properties used in this simulation is shown in table
small, but the total expense is not normally as great as that no.1
of a high quality experimental facility. Moreover, there are g. The boundary conditions used in this simulation are
several unique advantages of CFD over experimental-based shown in table no.2 and 3.
approaches to fluid systems design. h. After setting all boundary conditions in fluent
1. Substantial reduction of lead times and costs of new software, to solve the numerical equations the
design. initialization by inlet is to be done.
2. Ability to study systems where controlled experimental i. To visualize the residuals of iterations verses
are difficult or impossible to perform. (e.g. very large convergence limit, the residual monitor is set to be in
systems) ON state condition.
3. Ability to study systems under hazardous conditions at j. To get the final results the numbers of iterations are
and beyond their normal performance limits. (e.g. safety set around 10000. The results for these simulations
studies and accident scenarios) were converged at around 4000 to 6000 iterations.
4. Practically unlimited level of detail of results. k. As the number of elements are more to get the
In contrast CFD codes can produce extremely large converged results the time taken for these simulations
volumes of results at virtually no added expense and it is will be more with single processor.
very cheap to perform parametric studies, for instance to l. Finally after getting the proper converged results the
optimize equipment performance[4]. air flow distribution and heat transfer inside the solar
air collector is been plotted in the form of Contour
A. Basics in CFD plots.
CFD codes are structured around the numerical m. The outlet temperature is been calculated from
algorithms that can tackle fluid flow problems. In order to ANSYS FLUENT after getting converged results and
provide easy asses to their solving power all commercial been compared with the experimental results.
CFD packages include sophisticated user interfaces to input
problem parameters and to examine the results. Hence all
code contains three main elements:
1. Pre-processor
2. Solver
3. Post-processor
B. Numerical Modeling of solar air collector
The procedure adopted to simulate the solar air collector
by CFD tool is as follows:
a. The 3D model is been modeled by using ANSYS
WORKBENCH software as shown in Fig.2
b. After creation of 3D model, the unstructured grid is
been created by using ANSYS ICEM software as
shown in fig 3 and fig.4
c. The unstructured grid created consist around 1.5 crore
elements.
Fig.2. 3D model of solar air collector visualizing the absorber plate

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013)
TABLE 2
PROPERTIES OF PEBBLE BLOCK

Property Value
Density 1350 Kg/m3
Thermal Conductivity 100 W/m K
Specific Heat 300-600 J/kg K

TABLE 3
PROPERTIES OF GLASS

Property Value
Density 1000 Kg/m3
Thermal Conductivity 1.75 W/m K
Specific Heat 910 J/kg K

C. Assumptions considered for simulation

Fig.3 3D mesh of Solar Flat Plate Collector
1. Air is used as working fluid, it is compressible
fluid.
2. Problem is considered 3D and steady state.
3. Surface considered in geometry are smooth air
flow over it is frictionless.
4. Ambient temperature is considered constant.
5. Flow is assumed to be turbulent.
6. Turbulence specification method of turbulent
intensity and viscosity ratio with 5 % and 10
respectively. By default these values are can be
taken 3 % and 3 respectively or calculated as per
model. Here it is been assumed that turbulence will
be more so approximately value has been taken by
doing trial and error for convergence of model
results[5].
Fig. 4 Meshing by using ANSYS fLUENT
TABLE 1. IV. RESULT AND D ISCUSSION
PROPERTIES OF AIR
The results obtained from the CFD analysis of solar flat
Property Value plate collector are presented in this section. The simulation
Mass flow rate of air 0.0105 Kg/sec is carried out for different times of the day i.e.9 am to 5
pm. Then the results obtained by this simulation compared
Density 1.165 kg/m3 with the experimental results as shown in fig 4. The curves
Thermal Conductivity 100 W/m K are plotted to indicate experimental and simulated outlet
temperatures versus time. From fig 4 it seems that the
Specific Heat 1005 J/kg K difference between experimental and simulated outlet
temperature for different times is almost 5˚C.

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013)
TABLE 4
COMPARISON OF EXPERIMENTAL AND CFD RESULTS
Time Solar Ambient Collector Collector
Hrs Intensity temperature temperature temperature
(W/m2) (0C) obtained by (0C)
CFD(0C)

9 am 621.7 32.5 60.87 55.7

10 750.5 34.7 73.75 60.5

am
11 879.5 37 85.34 67.4
am
12 909 38.9 93.38 76.5

1 pm 948 38.5 96.10 78.1

2 pm 909.5 41.1 93.40 75.2 Fig.5(a) Streamlines for temperature distribution

3 pm 790 40 84.84 68.8

4 pm 597.5 35 68.14 60.3

5 pm 357 33 43.06 42

Fig.5(b) Streamlines for temperature distribution at 9 am of the day

Graph 1. Comparison of CFD and experimental results for day1

Also the temperature distribution and flow distribution

are obtained by CFD simulation. The contour plots
obtained for temperature distribution and velocity
distribution in streamlines are shown in fig 5(a), 5(b), 5(c),
5(d).

Fig.5(c) Streamlines for velocity distribution

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 International Journal of Emerging Technology and Advanced Engineering
Website: www.ijetae.com (ISSN 2250-2459, ISO 9001:2008 Certified Journal, Volume 3, Issue 4, April 2013)
REFERENCES
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[3] Mohamed Selmi, Mohammed J. Al-Khawaja and Abdulhamid
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V. CONCLUSION “Numerical Simulation of a Solar Flat Plate Collector using Discrete
Transfer Radiation Model (DTRM) – A CFD Approach”,
There is a good agreement between the experimental and Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering 2011 Vol
simulated results for outlet air temperatures. Although there III,WCE 2011, July 6 - 8, 2011, London, U.K.
are some small discrepancies due to some experimental [7] David Luna, Yves Jannot, Jean-Pierre Nadeau, “An oriented-design
imperfectness matters, we still have a good confidence in simplified model for the efficiency of a flat plate solar air collector”,
the CFD simulation program that can be used in the future Applied thermal engineering 30 (2010) 2808-2814
for more complex solar collector problem. [8] G. D. Rai, “Solar Energy Utilization”, Khanna Publishers, page no.
156- 199
It is found from the CFD analysis that the flow of air in
the solar flat plate collector is not properly distributed. In
order to overcome this issue we can introduce baffles at the
inlet of collector which improves the efficiency of of solar
flat plate collector.

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