Single pass solar air heater with transverse fins and without absorber plate

The single pass solar air heater, with transverse fins and wire mesh used as an absorber plate, is constructed and tested for thermal efficiency at a geographic location of Cyprus in the city of Famagusta. The absorber plate was replaced by sixteen steel wire mesh layers, 0.18 x 0.18cm in cross section opening and a 0.02cm in diameter. The fins were painted with black color and positioned transversely along the bed such that four equally spaced sections were created. The transversely fins are arranged in a way to force the air to flow through the bed like eight letter path. The obtained results show that for air mass flow rate rang between 0.011-0.032 kg/s, the thermal efficiency increases with increasing the air mass flow. The maximum efficiency obtained is 58% for the mass flow rate of 0.037 kg/s. Moreover, the temperature difference between the outlet flow and the ambient, ΔT, reduces as the air mass flow rate increases. The maximum difference between the outlet and ambient temperature obtained was 40.6 o C for mass flow rate of 0.011kg/s. Comparison with a conventional single pass collector shows a substantially enhancement in the thermal efficiency. INTRODUCTION: Heating air with solar energy is much cleaner than heating with fossil fuel, the delivered heat from air solar device can be used for drying agricultural products such as crop, grains, seeds, fruits, and vegetables. Solar air heaters are also used as pre heaters in industries and as auxiliary heaters in building to save energy during winter times [1]. Conventional solar air heaters mainly consist of panels, insulated hot air ducts and air blowers in active systems. The panel consists of an absorber plate and a transparent cover. There are many different parameters affecting on the solar air heater efficiency, e.g. collector length, collector depth, type of absorber plate, glass cover plate, wind speed, etc. [2]. The absorber plate area and heat transfer coefficient between the air and the absorber plate are two important parameters affecting the efficiency of the collector. When increased these parameters will increase the collector efficiency. On the other hand it will increase the pressure drops inside the solar air heater and increases the pumping power required [2]. The convective heat transfer rate between air flow and absorber plate could be augmented by increasing the absorber surface area and by increasing turbulence inside the bed [3]. The use of Vgroove absorber was found to be more efficient by 12% than the flat plate collector of similar design [4] [5]. Using corrugated plates is a suitable method to increase the thermal performance and provides higher compactness [6]. A mathematical model that allows the determination of the thermal performances of the single-pass solar air collector with offset rectangular plate fin absorber plate is developed by [7]. Experimental and theoretical investigations are carried out on sheet metal absorber in the form of a chevron pattern [8]. The effect of using absorber plates coated with various selective coating materials on the heater performance was also investigated by [9]. Comparisons were made among four types of solar air collectors by Suleyman [10]. It has been found that the performance of a solar air heating system can be improved by operating several sub collectors in series in place of a single large collector with the same total area [11] [12]. The study concludes that the performance of solar air heater with single plastic glazing and flat plate absorber were approximately 9% more than the collector with double plastic glazing. Another study was carried out to determine the comparative performance of one-pass for fixed and free fins,