Performance analysis of evacuated tube type solar air heater with parabolic trough type collector

Abstract

Solar energy is a most promising resource of non-conventional energy to utilize for heating. Based on the application there are two kinds of utilization one is water heating and the second one is air heating. This is generally done by flat plate solar collector but due to its limitations to use in higher temperature ranges (i.e., 70-95 °C) and poor performance led to introduce the application of evacuated tube and parabolic trough collector. To fabricate the solar air heater, one ended evacuated tube is used as a receiver of the parabolic trough and U-tube copper pipe is inserted within the evacuated tube. The air heating process is done at various mass flow rates and it was found that the average outlet temperature was more at the minimum mass flow rate, but the average efficiency was less. At maximum mass flow rate, the average outlet temperature was minimum, and the average thermal efficiency was maximum. The maximum thermal efficiency obtained was 24.1% at the 0.0082 kg/s mass flow rate and the maximum temperature that was obtained was 151 °C at 0.0062 kg/s mass flow rate. Hot air being used for different application in space heating, food processing, fruits and vegetable drying and in regeneration of desiccant.

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