Thermal Performance Factor of Impinging Jet-Angled Corrugated Solar Air Heaters.

Solar energy is a clean and sustainable source of power. Although there are various uses for solar energy, the Solar Air Heater (SAH) has a poor thermal efficiency. To improve thermal efficiency, a novel corrugated jet-impinging channel has been proposed for the absorbing plate of SAHs. A Numerical study have been performed for four different arrangements of jets i.e., single circular, single square, 2x2 square and 3x3 square jet array with four channels i.e., 30 o , 45 o , 60 o and 90 o corrugated over the Reynolds number range of 1969-3305 for the jet to target plate range of 4.9-14.2. It was observed that and multiple jets impinging increase the heat transfer significantly. An optimization study has been performed using the parametric study. The 45 o corrugated target plate with 3x3 multiple jet impingement, 4.9 jet to target plate distance, and 3305 Reynolds number was shown to have the best Nusselt number value. In contrast to the base scenario, a Thermal Performance Factor of 2.3 times was achieved.