Heat and Mass Transfer Research Journal (HMTRJ)

Research Article

On The Performance of Solar Air Heaters: Numerical Study

Ahmed Ghazy

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Alouf University, Sakaka, Aljouf, Saudi Arabia

Submitted: June 26, 2017; Revised: October 4, 2017; Accepted: December 27, 2017

Abstract

Solar air heaters are used in many applications such as space heating and crop drying. A major drawback of solar air heaters is their low thermal efficiency. An enhancement in the efficiencies of solar air heaters should be associated with an augmentation in heat gain by flowing air and a reduction in heat losses to the ambient environment. This paper drives insight into the influence of the solar air heaters configurations on heat gain and loss within solar air heaters. A comparison was held in this paper between three solar air heaters. Results showed that recovering heat losses from the glass cover of the heater by flowing air improves the efficiency of the heater more than does doubling the glass cover of the heater. However, for relatively high air flow rates, the efficiency of conventional solar air heaters is very close to that where heat losses form the glass cover is recovered by flowing air.

Keywords

TSolar Energy; Air Heaters; Heat Transfer; Performance.

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