In the present work, thermo-fluidic behavior of a heat exchanger tube with conical shaped insert has been investigated with the help of finite volume method. To enhance the heat transfer rate, two different types of roughness has been used in conical insert i.e. protrusion and dimple roughness. A three-dimensional computational model with RNG turbulence model is used for the simulation and it has been performed for three different diameters (3 mm, 6 mm and 9 mm) and two different pitch space (120 mm and 180 mm) for both protrusion and dimple roughness. The present model has been validated with Dittus-Boelter equation and with Blasius equation for Nusselt number and friction factor, respectively. For a constant heat flux of 1200 W/m2, effect of roughness, diameter and pitch on Nusselt number and friction factor has been predicted for Reynold number range of 5000 to 30000. From the result, it is found that, the protrusion shaped roughness has better thermal performance factor than dimple shape and diameter of 6 mm has performed better than 3 mm and 9 mm for both the cases of roughness due to favorable flow dynamics.
Due to the minimal transfer of heat from absorber plate to moving air in the duct, solar air heaters have low performance. One of the procedures to augment the heat transfer by substantial amount is by utilizing artificial roughness, by which the performance can be improved considerably. In this study, an economic investigation of solar air heater embedded with artificial roughness is accomplished numerically employing v-shaped roughness, with the objective of optimising life cycle solar savings. The non-dimensional parameters of roughness, namely, angle of attack (α), roughness pitch (p/e) and roughness height (e/Dh) are examined by varying temperature rise over the solar air heater (∆T) and solar radiations (I) for different economic parameters values i.e., cost of collector, cost of roughness elements, and cost of conventional fuel.
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