We have done some researches and studies regarding Solar Air Heater, which is a

simple device to heat air by utilizing solar energy, which has many applications
in drying agricultural products, such as seeds & fruits. as well as utilized for
heating buildings with auxiliary heaters to save energy in winter (Mohammed,
1997). It considered one of the simplest methods to heat the air with little capital cost.
A solar air heater including a housing having a transparent front wall and an inlet and
outlet for establishing a flow path for a gas such as air to be heated and a porous
radiation absorbent collector plate positioned across the flow path and arranged to
accept incident solar radiation passing through the front wall wherein a radiation trap
is placed inside the housing either adjacent to the front wall, directly on top of the
collector plate or between the collector plate and the front wall. The radiation trap has
a cellular structure such as honeycomb and is made from a material which is lighttransmitting but opaque to infrared radiation emitted from the collector plate in a
direction toward the front wall. When the radiation trap is placed adjacent to the front
wall the trap can additionally serve as an air buffer layer. In this instance, however,
the radiation trap must be maintained in at least firm mechanical contact with the front
wall and preferably the trap is actually bonded to the front wall (McCullough and
Hewett, 1981).

Analysis:
Energy balance analysis is performed for four types of air heaters, conventional
with one glass cover, conventional with double glass covers and counter air
heater with and without porous matrix (Mohamad, 1997). The analysis for the
conventional type of collectors is done for the purpose of comparison under
similar operating conditions. Figures 2(a)-(d) show the schematics of such
collectors, respectively.
Under steady state operating conditions, the energy balances for the mentioned
collectors are as follows:
Conventional with single glass cover For glass cover (heat conduction through
the glass cover is neglected):

For airstream (forced flow):

For absorber plate (conduction heat transfer through the absorber is neglected):

Conventional with double glazing For top glass cover:

For second glass cover:

For airstream:

For absorber plate:

Counter-flow solar air heater without porous matrix

For top glass cover:

For downflow airstream:

For second glass cover:

For up flow airstream:

For absorber plate:

Counter-Flow solar air heater with porous matrix Equations (8)-( 10) are used for the
glass cover, downflow of airstream and for the second glass cover, respectively. If it is
assumed that the air and solid matrix are in thermal equilibrium, i.f. the temperature
of solid is equal to the temperature of the air locally, the energy balance for air in the
second passage can be simplified as

The above assumption is justified on the fact that the volumetric heat transfer
coefficient in the solid matrix is very large, of the order of 4 x 10 W/(m3 K)
(Younis and Viskanta, 1993).

References:
Mohamad A.A.(1997). HIGH EFFICIENCY SOLAR AIR HEATER. Solar
Energy.60(2)71-76.

McCullough R.W, and Hewett T.A.(1981). SOLAR AIR HEATER. United States
Patent

Younis L. B. and Viskanta R.(1993) Experimental determination of the volumetric

heat transfer coefficient between stream of air and ceramic foam. ht. J. Heat
Mass Trans.36, 1425-1434.