Thermal performance of a double-pass solar air heater (SAH) with ribbed absorber surface – an experimental study
Authors: Sah Nandkishor , Mandapati Mohan Jagadeesh Kumar 
Published: March 2020

Purpose
Use of packed beds, enhanced tubes, nano-fluids and artificial ribs are few passive techniques to increase heat transfer in solar air heaters (SAHs). Artificial ribs attached to the absorber plate of the SAH will enhance the turbulence near the plate. Experimental analyses are conducted to find the thermal performance of SAH with ribs of regular geometries including rectangular, semi-circular and triangular in cross section. This paper aims to present the improvement in thermal performance of SAH with modified-arc.

Design/methodology/approach
Absorber plates are designed with ribs of rectangular, triangular, semi-circular and modified-arc in cross-section using existing data in literature. Physical dimensions of the ribs are designed by adapting procedure from literature. Absorber plates are manufactured with ribs and coated with blackboard paint and fixed to the existing SAH. Experiments are conducted with a variable-speed blower fixed to the inlet section of the SAH, which is used to supply air at different mass flow rates in a range between 0.495 and 0.557 kg/min.

Findings
Efficiency is found to be a strong function of mass flow rate of air through the SAH from the present experimental investigations. It was found that use of modified-arc ribs enhanced the efficiency of SAH by 105.35 per cent compared to SAH with plane absorber plate. Efficiency of SAH with modified-arc ribs is found to be higher by 24.43, 45.61 and 63.21 per cent, respectively, for SAH with semi-circular, rectangular and triangular arc ribs on its absorber plate.

Research limitations/implications
Experiments on SAH are conducted during daytime from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm in open atmospheric conditions. Solar intensity is continuously changing during the experimentation from morning to evening. Calculations are made based on the observations with average values of solar intensity and temperature readings. More accurate values of SAH efficiency can be obtained with constant heat supply to the absorber plate by simulating the experimental setup in indoor conditions. Temperature and flow rate observations could be more accurate with sophisticated instrumentation rather than using simple thermocouples and orifice meters.

Social implications
SAHs are basically used to supply hot air for both rural and industrial applications. These are used for crop drying, preheating of air, removal of moisture from leather, chemicals, etc. Conventionally, formers in India are using open sun drying to remove moisture from agricultural products. In this method, the moisture can be removed up to a level of 20 to 25 per cent. Use of SAH can remove moisture up to below 5 per cent and process is clean without reducing the quality of agricultural products. Enhancing the efficiency of SAHs will surely increase its usage by formers for crop drying.

Originality/value
Use of artificial ribs on absorber plate of SAH is most economical among many of the active and passive techniques. Numerical and experimental investigations are found in literature with regular cross-sectional ribs, including rectangular, triangular and semi-circular. The present work proposed new shape of the ribs named as modified-arc, which was not presented in the literature. Experimental analysis proved that the use of modified-arc makes the SAH more efficient in heat transfer.