Solar air heater is a type of heat exchanger which transforms solar radiation into heat energy. The thermal performance of conventional solar air heater has been found to be poor because of the low convective heat transfer coefficient from the absorber plate to the air. It is attributed to the formation of a very thin boundary layer at the absorber plate surface commonly known as viscous sub-la...

In this paper we present a prototype for a new type of solar thermal collector designed for architectural integration. In this proposal, the conventional geometry of a flat solar thermal collector is changed to a curved geometry, to improve its visual impact when mounted on a building facade or roof. The mathematical equations for the beam and diffuse solar radiation received by a collector wit...

The nano-hole array structure in the black scales of the butterfly can be viewed as a natural solar collector. A low-cost, high-efficiency light absorption structure, inspired by the Papilio ulysses butterfly, was optimized using a finite-difference time-domain method. The results show that the nano-hole structure of Papilio ulysses contributes to light absorption. The shape of the holes affect...

An evacuated tube solar collector using therminol D-12 as heat transfer fluid coupled with parabolic trough is studied in this paper. An experimental set-up was constructed to study the performance of evacuated tube collector with therminol D-12 as heat transfer fluid. The parabolic trough is coupled with evacuated tube collector for better performance. In the traditional solar collectors water...

This paper proposes the re-planning operation method using Tabu Search for direct current (DC) smart house with photovoltaic (PV), solar collector (SC), battery and heat pump system. The proposed method is based on solar radiation forecasting using reported weather data, Fuzzy theory and Recurrent Neural Network. Additionally, the re-planning operation method is proposed with consideration of s...

Solar Energy Applications Laboratory , Colorado State University . Fort Collins , CO 80523 Design of a vapor transport solar water heater using R-123 is optimized to maximize thermal performance and minimize life cycle cost. Optimal systems for one and twostory homes are identified in a parametric study of collector area, condenser heat transfer area, water storage tank volume and circulating r...

In the present work the effect of Cu-Water nanofluid, as heat transfer fluid, on the performance of a parabolic solar collector was studied numerically. The temperature field, thermal efficiency, mean-outlet temperatures have been evaluated and compared for the conventional parabolic collectors and nanofluid based collectors. Further, the effect of various parameters such as fluid velocity, vol...

drying is a high energy consuming process. solar drying is one of the most popular methods for dehydration of agricultural products. in the present study, the performance of a forced convection solar dryer equipped with recycling air system and desiccant chamber was investigated. the solar dryer is comprised of solar collector, drying chamber, silica jell desiccant chamber, air ducts, fan and m...