Design and Development of Solar Water Heater to Enhance Thermal Efficiency

Abstract

This project is about development of a solar water heater with increased thermal efficiency using nanofluids as enhancement medium compared to conventional solar water heater which uses water as the working medium to overcome the inadequate heating of water in the seasons like rainy and winter. In this project Al?O?-H2O nanofluid is used as working medium, where Al?O? is used as nanoparticle and water is used as base fluid. A nanofluid is a fluid containing nanometer sized particles, called nanoparticles. These fluids are engineered colloidal suspensions of nanoparticles in a base fluid. It also includes analysis at various concentrations of Al?O? to determine the performance of the solar water heater.

Introduction

I. INTRODUCTION

There is a major problem of energy crisis which is faced by all over the world. In order to control this energy crisis problem many researches are performed using renewable energy sources like using solar energy instead of electrical and fuel energy. Because solar energy is free of cost and environmentally friendly. In this perspective different solar water heaters are designed to use solar energy for heating of water, which is used for domestic and industrial purposes. Solar water heater largely depends on transmittance, absorption and conduction of solar and the conductivity of the working fluid. Sunlight based vitality is one of the cleaner types of sustainable power source assets. The regular sun oriented gatherer is a settled innovation, which has different applications, for example, water warming, space warming and cooling. Nonetheless, the warm productivity of these authorities is restricted by the assimilation properties of the working liquid, which is extremely poor for commonplace traditional sunlight based level plate gatherer. As of late utilization of Nano liquids, which is fundamentally fluid nanoparticles colloidal scattering as a working liquid has been found to upgrade sun based level plate gatherer warm proficiency most extreme by 30 percent. Prerequisite of vitality is expanding step by step since total populace is additionally expanding. Vitality can be sort of inexhaustible or non-sustainable. Sustainable is the type of vitality that can be reused and are effectively accessible in nature like sun powered vitality, geothermal vitality, wind vitality, tidal vitality and so forth non-sustainable power source goes under the sort of vitality which is gotten from non-renewable energy source as like coal, oil and other subparts. The non-sustainable power source supplies are getting depleted with constant use. So to finish this necessity there is just a single excellent way that is to utilization of sun based vitality in immediate or backhanded manner. Sun based vitality is most regular vitality, which gives enormous measure of intensity. The wellspring of sun powered vitality is sun watts are the vitality which strike on earth surface. Sun gives us 35 thousand times more force than we really need. In any case, of complete sun based vitality arriving at the world's surface just 7 to 8% is being used. Vitality originates from sun as electromagnetic wave which has frequency in the middle of 0.2 to 0.4 micrometers. Sun based radiation can partition one is immediate radiation and other is diffuse radiation. Sunlight based vitality is utilized in different fields like Heating and cooling of private structure, sun oriented water warming, sun based drying of farming and animal items, Salt creation by vanishing of seawater, sun based cookers, and sun powered motors for water siphoning, Solar Refrigeration, Solar electric force age and sun based photograph voltaic cells. Solar energy is considered nowadays as one of the most important sources of clean, free and renewable energy with minimum environmental effects. After industrial revolution (1970s) energy consumption increased sharply, so threat of energy shortages led scientists to find new sources of energy.

II. EXPERIMENTAL TEST SET UP AND DESIGN

The nanofluid is placed in the riser tube and is circulated with the help of a pump and the flow of nanofluid is controlled with the help of a flow control valve. The solar panel when exposed to the sunlight, it gets heated up, this also causes heating up of the nanofluid. And these heated nanofluid is passed to the heat exchanger, there will be heat exchange between nanofluid pipes to water, resulting in heating up of water.

At 4% concentration of CuO and a Heat flux of 5000 w/m2, it is observed that the outlet temperature of nanofluid is 304.6 K.  Hence, Al2O3 nanofluid have better thermal efficiency enhancement rate when compared to Cuo nanofluid.

B. Analysis of Al2O3 Nano Fluid at Various Concentrations

As per the Ansys methodology mentioned above, we have performed analysis at various concentrations of nanofluid and compared the results. We  found  that,  as  the  concentration  of  the  nanofluid  increases,  the  heat  transfer coefficient first  increases.  When the concentration exceeds the critical value, the heat transfer coefficient decreases due to deposition of nanoparticles on the heating surface.

C. For Conventional solar Water Heater

Conclusion

It is observed that the overall efficiency of solar water heater is enhanced. Al2O3 nanofluid has better thermal enhancement rate compared to other nanofluids like CuO. Al2O3 nanofluid has critical point at 3% concentration. As the concentration of nanofluid increases, the heat transfer coefficient first increases. When the concentration exceeds the critical value, the heat transfer coefficient decreases. Sufficient hot water can be available even in the seasons like rainy and winter. This can be used for both commercial and domestic purposes. This provides faster rate of heating water, and saves time compared to conventional solar water heater.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2022 Somasekhar T, Naveen Kishore P, M.V. Kishore. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.