Comparison of Efficiency of Solar Water Heater Using Different Nanofluids In CFD

Abstract

Since the industrial revolution, fossil fuel has been the main resource for generating power and energy. However, with an increase in environmental awareness, people realized the huge negative impact of fossil fuel burning on Earth. Consequently, the concept of renewable energy emerged, and the field of renewable energy has seen an increasing number of researchers devote effort to solving the energy crisis facing humanity. Among all the renewable energy sources, solar energy plays one of the important role in the development of industry. This study on workbench 2021R1 was used to model nanofluid flow and heat transfer in the tube of a flat plate solar collector. The flow in the tube is laminar. Two types of nanoparticles, i.e., Al2O3 and CuO, with three different volume concentrations, i.e., 0%, 0.5%, and 1% in water, were chosen for comparison purposes. The inlet temperature of the fluid was assumed to be uniform at the room temperature of 300K. In this thesis, the results of a simulation are discussed on outlet temperature, efficiency. The outlet temperature of the nanofluid was greater than that of pure water, and the difference increased with the volume concentration of the nanoparticles. Furthermore, the water-based CuO nanofluid has better performance than the water-based Al2O3 nanofluid. The efficiency of the solar collector did not increase when nanoparticles were added, owing to limitations of the model; an example of a limitation is that solar energy absorption by nanoparticles was not considered in the model.