The present work evaluates the performance of solar collector using Al2O3-C2H6O2-H2O nanofluid as a working fluid through both experimental and CFD analysis. Ethylene-glycol water mixture (40:60 v/v) is used as base fluid, where α-Al2O3 nanoparticle of 20 nm average size is dispersed for the preparation of nanofluid of four different volumetric concentration (vol. conc.) of 0.05, 0.075, 0.1 and...

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...

Abstract—There was a scenario present day that drying of fresh fruits and vegetables by indirect solar drying by using mechanical device; hence, an effort was made to develop a small scale solar tunnel dryer (STD). Drying of spinach is carried out to analyze the performance of the dryer and to study its drying characteristics. To evaluate the performance of dryer the independent variables were ...

In this paper, an attempt has been made to obtain nonsensitive solutions in the multi-objective optimization of a photovoltaic/thermal (PV/T) air collector. The selected objective functions are overall energy efficiency and exergy efficiency. Improved thermal, electrical and exergy models are used to calculate the thermal and electrical parameters, overall energy efficiency, exergy components a...

The Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), with the support of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), has investigated the thermal performance of solar absorbers which are an integral yet indistinguishable part of a building’s roof. The first roof-integrated solar absorber (RISA) system was retrofitted into FSEC’S Flexible Roof Facility in Cocoa, Florida in September 1998. This “proof-of...

The influence of recycling on double-pass solar air collectors with welding of the V-corrugated absorber has been studied experimentally and theoretically. Welding the V-corrugated absorber and the recycle-effect concept to the solar air collector was proposed to strengthen the convective heat-transfer coefficient due to turbulence promotion. Both the recycle effect and the V-corrugated absorbe...

We report the first realization of a charge injection transistor with a complementary collector. The device is implemented using InGaAs/InAlAs/InGaAs heterostructure material grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Real space transfer of hot electrons into the p-type collector leads to a luminescence signal arising from the recombination of the injected electrons with holes in the collector active reg...

In this paper, a new solar-heated generation system with capacity of 10kW is designed. The system is based on solar-heated Rankine cycle. The CPC solar energy collector array is used as the main heat source, and the gas boiler as the assistant heat source. The heat storage facility provides heat for put-off 24 hours generating without sun’s radiation. The paper is focused on the analysis of fou...