Research Article A Parametric Study to Improve the Heat Transfer of Solar Air Heater Through CFD Analysis

Abstract

In this article, we optimize the performance of a solar air heater (SAH) using two designs and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis in this article. With the help of ANSYS fluent, two designs are considered to investigate the effect of different rib heights (e = 1, 1.2, 1.4, 1.6, and 1.8) and duct depths (h = 16, 18, 20, 22, and 24). The effects of different parameters such as velocity, temperature, turbulence kinetic energy, and turbulence energy are compared to optimize the performance of designs 2 and 3. It is noticed that except temperature, all other parameters are on the lower side for design 2 as compared to design 3, due to improper air mixing in design 2. The authors presented the optimized design 3 with rib height e = 1.8 and depth of duct h = 16 after consideration of all the parameters (temperature, velocity, turbulence kinetic energy, and turbulence intensity) at various rib heights and depths of the duct. These numerical results will serve as a benchmark for future research to improve the efficacy of solar air heaters.