Experimental Investigation on Performance of Solar Air Heaters With Thermal Storage

Abstract

Solar air heaters are used for applications at low and moderate temperatures such as; crop drying, timber seasoning, and space heating. The present research focused on a forced convection flat plate solar air heater with heat storage system under the climatic conditions of India – Mangalore for hot summer days of April 2015. In this work, attempt has been made to draw a comparison between the collector efficiencies for flat plate collectors and when fins of triangular configuration are incorporated. Also, the effectiveness of the fin with comparison to the flat plate was evaluated. The variation of solar radiation and air heater efficiency are discussed. Effect of heat storage is found to be significant on the efficiency of the collector. Air heaters used primarily to heat ambient air in commercial, industrial, agriculture and process applications. Keywords—Air heater, flat platecollector,effectivenes