Nanofluids for Solar Thermal Collection and Energy Conversion

This paper investigates the improvement in solar energy collection and conversion using Al2O3-Water nanofluids in a solar flat plate collector (SFPC). The efficiency of a solar flat plate collector using water as the fluid medium is analyzed experimentally and theoretically. For theoretical analysis, a mathematical model in MATLAB is used to simulate and is validated by the experimental results. To enhance the solar energy collection and conversion efficiency of the SFPC, Al2O3-Water nanofluid was selected as the fluid medium. The nanofluid properties like density, specific heat capacity, thermal conductivity and viscosity are analyzed and compared for several models of Al2O3-Water nanofluids and the best model was selected to modify the simulation. Effect of particle diameter in the nanofluid was found to be marginal on the nanofluid properties. The optimum volume concentration of the nanofluid was found to be 4% giving an efficiency increase of 7.78% in the SFPC over the use of water. This reduces the area of the SFPC by 10.5%.