PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF SOLAR - AIR HEATER

Abstract

Solar energy is the most important among renewable energy sources due to quantitative abundance, capacity to overcome energy crisis and problem created by the continuous use of fossil fuels on a very large scale. The main part 01 any solar energy system is solar collector, a type of heat exchanger which transfers solar radiation energy into heat energy. Solar air collectors are widely used for low to moderate temperature applications like space heating, crop drying, timber seasoning and other such applications. Convectional solar air heaters have poor thermal efficiency due to high heat losses and low convective heat transfer coefficient between absorber plate and air stream. leading to higher absorber plate temperature and greater thennal loss. Attempts have been made to improve the thermal pertbrmance of conventional solar air - heaters by using different designs. Double pass counter flow type with wavy shape absorber plate is a good design which can he used. Wavy shape absorber plate increases surface area. Due to this it absorbes more solar radiations. So more heat is trans!rred to flowing air. A comparative study done between flat plate and wavy shape absorber plate solar air heater.