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International Journal of Solar Energy

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EVALUATION OF PERFORATED PLATE SOLAR AIR HEATER

N. M. KHATTAB
a a

Solar Energy Dept, National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt

Available online: 06 Apr 2007

To cite this article: N. M. KHATTAB (2001): EVALUATION OF PERFORATED PLATE SOLAR AIR HEATER, International Journal of Solar Energy, 21:1, 45-62 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01425910008914363

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In,. J , ojSolor k r g y . 2000. Vol. 21. pp. 45-62

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EVALUATION OF PERFORATED PLATE SOLAR AIR HEATER

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N. M. KHATTAB
Solar Energy Dept.. National Research Center, Cairo, Egypt (Received 3 February 1999; Infinalform 27 July 1999)
Perforated plates had been successfully used in recent years to achieve high heat transfer coefficient from the absorber plate to the Bowing air stream in solar air heaters. Since pumping pressure to maintain a particular Bow in the solar air heater utilizing this type of absorber has significant inhence on collected energy, so the design of perforated plate configuration must be based on the net energy gained from that collector which is the difference between energy collected and energy paid to overcome pumping pressure. A mathematical model had been constructed and validated experimentally for perforated plate solar air heater to study the effect of plate configurations and aidow rate on both energy gained and pressure loss. The results show that, the flow rate of air and plate configurations have a great eRect on net energy gained from the air heater. The results also show that a plate of certain con6gurations operates most efficiently at certain Bow rate and more than one configurations can give optimum value of net energy gained for a particular Bow rate.

Keywordx Energy gained; Net energy gained; Perforated plate configurations; Pressure
drop; Solar air heater

INTRODUCTION The most critical parameter of the solar collector design is the forced convective heat transfer coefficient in the flow channel. If t h s coefficient is low, as with the case of air, a relatively high plate surface temperature would be necessitated for a given heat load per unit area of collector. Under such conditions the various collector heat losses are high and its efficiency is low. In order to increase the heat transfer coefficient, and hence to improve system performance, several modified designs of air heaters have been proposed. Out of many

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possible designs, perforated plates have found considerable industrial applications in recent years. With these types of plates, convective boundary layer is continually sucked off so that heat that would be lost by convection from the absorber is captured by the air flow into the collector. The intimate heat transfer between the plate and the sucked air keeps the temperature low, thus minimizing the radiant loss. In their study, (Kutscher et al., 1993) show that even under windy conditions, convective heat loss is negligible for perforated plates utilized as an absorber in an unglazed solar collectors. The study of heat transfer effectiveness of the perforated plates by (Cao and Holland, 1993) shows that up to 20% of the heat gain is from the hole sides. (Kutcher, 1994) in his study of heat exchange effectiveness and pressure drop for low-speed air flow through thin, low porosity, isothermal perforated plates shows that, the important factors affecting heat exchange effectiveness and pressure drop are suction flow rate, cross wind speed, hole pitch and hole diameter. For thin plates the actual thickness has little effect on effectiveness. He also shows that, while the heat transfer capability increases, the friction losses also increases. So,. in the design of this type of absorber heat gain as well as pressure drop must be considered. The present work aimed to study and analyze in greater details the thermal and hydrodynamic behavior of the solar air heater of perforated plate absorber with different configurations and at different flow rates. Governing equations for velocity and temperature are solved numerically for the air flowing in perforated plate solar air heater.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF THE COLLECTOR

The perforated plate air heater investigated in the present study consists of black painted perforated absorber with single cover of glass and'well insulated from sides and bottom. The absorber is perforated with identical parallel, spaced narrow rectangular holes. The crosssectional area of the airflow between the absorber and glass is decreased gradually in the direction of the incoming air to maintain uniform mass velocity. As a result two air paths are created. I-Air enters the collector from the top of the absorber and flow through holes under the absorber (unidirectional type as the direction of flow is

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about the same as that of the incoming radiation. 2-Air enters from the bottom of the collector and flowing through the holes above the absorber (counter flow type). Compared with the solar collector of counter flow type, the unidirectional flow collector has the advantage of having the cool incoming air always in contact with the glass cover and losses to the surrounding is therefor kept low. The overall efficiency of the unidirectional type collector is therefor usually higher than that of counter flow type solar collector. So the present work will be devoted to the study of solar collector of unidirectional type.

DESIGN CRITERION OF PERFORATED PLATE

In this section, the effect of plate configurations on net energy gained from the perforated plate air heater will be discussed. The net energy gained En,, will be the total energy gained from the air heater E minus the energy paid to overcome friction losses EL.
En,, = E - EL,

where E = mCp(T, - Tamb)and EL =fP

(1)

where f is the conversion factor to transfer pressure into energy. The air heater considered has a perforated absorber of length L, width W, and perforated with equally spaced rows of square holes of sides S. NI is the number of rows and N2 is the number of equally spaced holes in each row. So the net absorbing area will be,

And the uniform suction velocity through the holes for a particular flow rate of air m , will be,

The air flowing in this air heater will suffer from total pressure drop P composed of axial pressure drop along the collector PI and pressure drop through holes P2 = N1 x N2 x AP2, where AP2 is the pressure drop through each hole. As seen P2 depends on N1, N2 and AP2. Also AP2 depends on N1, N2 and S since increasing or decreasing each

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N. M. KHATTAB

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of them will result in decreasing or increasing Vs and consequently AP2. Similarly, the total energy gained to the flowing air E will be the sum of the energy gained along the collector E l and the energy gained through holes E 2 = N 1 x N 2 x AE2, where A E 2 is the energy gained through each hole. E l depends on A,,, since increase of the net absorbing area increase both the energy input to the collector and the energy losses to the surroundings, giving energy gained to the flowing air along the collector of El. E2 depends on N1, N2 and also AE2. AE2 depends on heat transfer coefficient through holes and hence Vs which is determined according to the values of NI, N2 and S. As all terms in Eqs. (1)-(3) are functions of NI, N2 and S, efficient performance of the collector, requires these parameters to be chosen, so as to maximize the net energy gained En,,. This could be obtained through the evaluation of the thermal and hydrodynamic behavior of the perforated plate with different configurations under different operating conditions.

MODEL DESCRIPTION
In the present model, conservation of mass, momentum and energy equations for air flowing over the absorber, through the holes and below the absorber are considered over a short period of time. During that period the intensity and direction of the incidence are assumed constant and a steady state condition is obtained. The heat transfer mechanism in the solar collector takes place by simultaneous radiation, convection and conduction. Radiation heat exchange occurs between the absorber and the cover glass, the absorber and bottom plate, as well as the cover glass and the surroundings. Convection heat transfer occurs between cover glass and surroundings air, air flowing above and below the absorber and air flowing through the holes. Conduction losses takes place through the bottom of the collector. The model includes the calculation of pressure drop along the collector and pressure drop in the holes. Figure 1 depicts the problem analyzed, air in steady turbulent flow with axial velocity U enter the upper part of the collector where it is sucked uniformly through the rows of holes. The three dimensional Reynolds stress averaged Navier-Stocks

PERFORATED PLATE SOLAR AIR HEATER

SUCTION VELOCITY V r
FLOW DIRECTION
A

.
A

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FIGURE 1 Perforated plate analyzed.

equations are used to describe the flow motion in cartesian coordinate. The governing equations for the mean flow quantities u and temperature in tensor form is as follows: Continuity

-aui =o

ax,

Momentum

aui u.-=Energy

a "--U. aui 'ax, x, ax,

.
la11

ap --

ax,

The well known k - E model is used to provide a link between the turbulent transport of momentum and energy and the mean flow properties.

N. M. KHATTAB

Initial Conditions. Atx=O,

w=v=O,

u = U , T=Ti,,

(7)

Hydrodynamic boundary conditions. At top and bottom plate, At absorber plate,

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u = v =w =0

(8)
(9)
(10)

u = v = w3= 0

At holes,

u =w

= 0, v = -Vs

Thermal boundary conditions at y = 0

U.I

=a [ ( ~ / w P )%- T1uj + Q ~ P C P ax, ax,

(12)

at y =yp and plate absorber,

at y=yp+t and plate absorber, where t is the thickness

ua ax, r=

'

a axj

[(k/WP)

% - T 1 4 + Q3/pCp

"

(14)

Here Q,,Q2, Q3 and Q4 are the energy gained to the flow at the boundaries. Where

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where 5 is a factor obtained by iteration through the calculation to determine QZ2and Q,, such that plate temperature on both its faces kept the same.

MODEL ALGORITHM

Finite volume technique developed by (Patankar, 1980) is used to solve the Eqs. (4)-(6). The calculation domain is divided into non overlapping control volumes such that there is one control surrounding each grid point. The differential equations are integrated over each control volume. Piece wise profiles expressing the variation of each variable between the grid points are used to evaluate the required integrals. The results are the discretization equations containing the values of each variable for a group of grid points. The discretization equations obtained in this manner expresses the conservation principle for each variable for the finite control volume. Because the variables have their strongest gradients near the centerline of the holes and near boundaries, the grid lines were made to be closes together there. The solution of the discretization equations will be obtained by the standard Gaussian-elimination method called TDMA (Tri-Diagonal-MatrixAlgorithm). The solution of the equations are obtained at cross stream flow section (Y-Z) and then marching to the next section in the axial direction X. Non-hydrodynamic variables can be solved directly by TDMA, however additional procedure is employed by (Patankar and Spalding, 1972) together with TDMA to solve for the hydrodynamic variables. The special procedure is called SIMPLE (Semi-ImplicitMethod-Pressure-Linked-Equation). The procedure used to solve the finite volume equations is a combined iterative-marching integration

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technique. In order to obtain stability of the solution, convergence is ensured first in the cross stream plane before marching to the down stream station. Convergence of the solution mainly depends on the forward axial step. It is assessed at the end of each iteration on the basis of the residual sources of each finite volume equation with some reference values. Accuracy of the solution is a function of the degree of convergence and of the number of grid nodes employed. For each flow configuration a grid independent solution is obtained by increasing the number of grid lines until no further distinguished changes are noticed. The data used in the numerical calculations are, solar incidence = 1000 w/m2, ambient temperature = 30 C, glass emmissevity = 3 8 , glass transmissivity X plate absorbetivity = .8, glass absorbitivity = .2, insulation thickness = .05 m, insulation thermal conductivity = .04 W/m k, wind speed = I m/sec.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

In this section, the mathematical model of the perforated plate solar air heater and the numerical method outlined in the previous section will be verified and followed by the evaluation of its performance at different flow rates and with different configurations. The computed results are compared with the experimental results of perforated plate air heater having an absorber of dimensions (1.5,.2m) and perforated with holes of 2mm diameter with 7mm distance between hole centers. The computed and measured total pressure drop for different flow rates are shown in Figure 2. From this figure, good agreement is obtained at high flow rates while much more differences are noticed at low flow rates. Figure 3 depicts the plate and air temperatures at exit from the collector for different flow rates. Predicted temperature results have the same trend as those of experimental ones. From this figure good agreement between calculated and measured outlet air temperatures is noticed while calculated plate temperatures are much more deviated from measured values. In general the deviation in results may be attributed to many factors, first, turbulence model may be more suitable for high flow rates than low flow rates, second the model prediction is for rectangular holes while the tested perforated plates have rounded holes

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50 0 0 50
100
I

200 Flow rate, kglhr m2 FIGURE 2

150

250

300

350

55 2 2 50-

-..__ . --. . -- -.

-_ - - -- --

-Predicted

Ta

--- Predicted Tp
Measured Ta

45-

f
35 30 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350
Flow rate Kglhr m2

FIGURE 3

of the same rectangular holes area. Figures 4- 12 illustrates the most important features of the perforated plates for 2-m-long collector of width .16 m, with configurations, N1= 100, N2 = 16 and S = 2 mm. In Figures 4 and 5, the effect of flow rates on heater performance is drawn. Figure 4 depicts the, pressure drop along the collector P I ,

N. M. KHATTAB

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100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Flow rate ,kglhr m2

FIGURE 4 Effect of flow rate on pressure drop. (N1= 100, N2= 16, S=2mm).

04 100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

Flow rate ,kglhr mZ

FIGURE 5 Effect of flow rate on rate of energy gained and lost through holes and net energy gained from the collector. (N1= 100, NZ = 16, S = 2 mm).

pressure drop due to holes P2 and the total pressure drop P = PI + P2 at different flow rates of air. Similarly, the energy gained along the collector El, the energy gained due to holes E2 and the total energy gained E = El +E2 are shown in Figure 5. The curves in Figures 4 and 5 show that, increase in total energy gained E is met by increase in the total pressure drop P as the flow rate increases. They also show that

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for low flow rates, more than 50% of total pressure drop and about 30% of the heat gained are due to holes, and these values increase with increasing flow rates. Effectiveness of using perforated plate on heater performance is evaluated through the calculation of, the energy gained and the energy lost due to holes and the net energy gained from the collector at different flow rates and shown in Figure 6. Examination of this figure, shows the strong effect of flow rate on the energy gained and lost due to holes. It is clear from this figure that, at high flow rates energy loss due to holes exceeds energy gained from these holes results in reducing the net energy gained from the solar collector. The results reveal the uselessness of using perforation at high flow rates and show that at a certain flow rate, the considered plate operate most efficiently. The effect of varying plate configurations N1, N2 and S on the pressure drop along the collector and through the holes is shown in Figures 7 - 9 respectively at the flow rate which realize maximum net energy gained (298 kg/hr m2). The calculated values of pressure drop drawn in Figure 7 for plates having different values of N1 and same values of N2 and S, shows that, pressure drop along the collector is alniost the same for different values of Nl while the pressure drop due to holes increases with increasing N1. This means that the pressure drop through holes (NI x N2 x AP2) with the low value of Nl and hence high value of AP2 will be higher than the pressure drop results from high value of N1 and hence low value of A P 2 . Similar results were noticed in Figure 8 when N2 is varied and N1, S are kept
250 200

-Enemy + E g a r 4 61. 10 holes I O U 61.10 holes

-150-100
Flow rate,kglhrmZ

FIGURE 6 Effect of flow rate on rate of net energy (NI= 100,M = 16,S= 2mm).

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loo 0

0
0 100 200 300 400
Number of rows N1

FIGURE 7 ERecl of number of rows NI on pressure drop. (N2=.16, S=2mm)

10

15

20

25

30

Number of rows.N2

FIGURE 8 Erect of number of holes

h on pressure drop. (N1= 100, S=Zmm).

constant. In Figure 9, a strong effect of varying S for the same values of N1 and N2 on pressure drop is observed. This is due to the sharp increase in pressure drop through holes as S decreases specially when S become less than 2mm. For different values of N1, N2 and S, energy gained along the collector, energy gained due to holes, and total energy gained are drawn in Figures 10- 12 at the same flow rate. In the same figures, energy loss due to porosity and thermal energy losses are

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Hole side S.mm

FIGURE 9 ERect of hole sides S o n pressure drop. (NI = 100, NZ= 16).

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

Number of rows N l

FIGURE 10 Effect of number of rows NI on rate of energy gained. ( N Z = 16,

S=2mm).

also drawn. The effect of varying N1 on different energies is shown in Figure 10. It is found from this figure that the total energy gained increases with increasing NI until certain value of N1 then it decreases again. The effect of increasing or decreasing N1 on total energy gained could be explained when examining the other curves in the same figure.

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10

15
Number of holes N2

20

25

FIGURE I 1 Effect of number of rows M on rate of energy gained. (NI= 100,

S=2mm).

3
Holes sides S,mm

FIGURE 12 ERect of hole side S on rate of energy gained. (N1= 100, N Z = 16)

For high values of N1, Vs will be small and hence the heat transfer coefficient through holes resulting in reduction of the energy gained due to holes, (curve 2). As a result, plate temperature increases causing the increase in thermal losses (curve 5). Besides, due high values of N1, energy lost due to porosity increases (curve 1) causing the reduction of energy input. For low values of N1,although heat transfer coefficient

PERFORATED PLATE SOLAR AIR HEATER

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0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Number of rows N1

FIGURE 13 Net rate of energy gained for different plate configurations N1 and S, (1'42 = 8).

Number of rows N1

FIGURE 14 Net rate of energy gained for different plate configurations N1 and S, (N2 = 16).

increases as Vs increases, yet thermal losses also increases causing the reduction of total energy gained. This is attributed to the elongation of the thermal boundary layer formed between rows which raise plate temperature and hence losses increases remarkably as in the case of flat plate collector. It appears from this discussion that, there exist a

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number of rows at which maximum energy gain and minimum energy loss could be attained. Similar effects of both N2 and S on energy gained were observed in Figures I I and 12, i.e., there exist a definite value of N2 and S at which maximum energy gained and energy loss are obtained. The presented analysis of the thermal and hydrodynamic behavior of the perforated plate seem to be of great help in the determination of plate configurations at which expected high values of net energy could obtained at a certain flow. Excluding the configurations which cause high pressure drop with low values of energy gained, net energy gained is obtained for different values of N1, N2 and S and shown in Figures 13 and 14. Examination of these figures reveals that for a given flow rate more than one configurations can realize maximum value of net energy gained.
CONCLUSIONS

The perforated plate in solar air heater may greatly improve the heater performance if it is properly designed. The factors affecting the thermal and hydrodynamic perforated plate performance are studied, where the dependence of the net heat gained upon each plate configurations is illustrated. A mathematical model is used to simulate solar heater performance and is solved by an iterative numerical technique. The obtained results show that for each plate size and flow rate, their exist a range of parameters - i.e., number, hole arrangement and hole area-that ensures optimum performance. This may show the need for having a design sheet that covers a wide range of plate dimensions and flow rates.
NOMENCLATURE

b
Cp

hpb hp,

insulation thickness, m specific heat of air, J/kg C radiative heat transfer coefficient between perforated plate and bottom plate, w/mZK radiative heat transfer coefficient between perforated plate and glass, w / m 2 K

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coefficient of wind related heat transfer, w/m2 k incident solar radiation, w/m2 thermal conductivity of air, W/mC collector length, m mass flow rate of air, kg/hr m2 number of rows number of holes in each row heat losses from glass to the surroundings, W heat losses from perforated plate to the glass, W heat losses from perforated plate to the bottom plate, W heat losses from bottom plate to the surroundings, W holes side, m perforated plate thickness, m ambient temperature, "C bottom plate temperature,"C glass temperature, "C perforated plate temperature, "C sky temperature, "C inlet velocity of air, m/sec back heat loss coefficient, w/m2 K Suction velocity, m/sec wind velocity, m/sec Collector width, m
Greek Letters
ol,
cup
E,

cg
T

solar absorptance of glass solar absorptance of perforated plate thermal emmitance of perforated plate thermal emmitance of glass glass transmissivity

References
Cao, S., Holland, K. G.T. and Brundrett. E. (1993) Heat Exchange Effectiveness of Unglazed Transpired-Plate Solar Collector in 2D Flow. Proceedings of ISES Solor World Congress, Budapest, 5, 361 - 366. Kutcher, C. F., Unglazed Transpired Solar Collectors: Heat Loss Theory. Transaction of the ASME, Journal of Solar Energy Engineering, 115, 182- 188, August, 1993.

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N. M. KHATTAB

Kusher, C. F., Heat exchange Effectiveness and pressure drop for air Flow through Perforated Plates with and without Crosswind. Transaction o f ASME, Journal o j Hear Transfer, 116, 391 -399, May, 1994. Patankar. V. S. (1980) Numerical Hear Transfer and Fluid Flow. McGrawhill. Patankar. V. S. and Spalding, D. B. (1972) A calculadon procedure for heat, mass and momentum transfer in three-dimensional parabolic flow. Journal of Hear and Mass Transfer, 15.

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