Effects of insertion of coiled wire in juxtaposition with twisted tapes on heat transfer rate and solar radiation without disturbing the flow inside the riser tubes in a solar flat plate collector is experimentally reconnoitered in this present work. The wire coil used as a turbulator is placed inside the riser tube while the twisted tape is inserted into the wire coil to create a continuous sw...

This work presents a hybrid scheme combining the potentialities of neural networks for approximation purposes with the well-know theory and widespread industrial application of PID techniques. The neural network is trained based on measured data from the plant providing a way of scheduling between a set of PID controllers, a priori tuned in different operating points by means of Takahashi rules...

PHOENICS-2010 has been applied to the simulation of heat transfer within a solar panel design on behalf of the LE2M Laboratory of ICAM, Nantes, France. The panel is assumed to be horizontal and consists of three layers; glass, collector and backboard, with air spaces between. The aim of the panel is to warm air through solar irradiation. The glass and collector gather heat by the "greenhouse ef...

Unglazed transpired collectors or UTC (also known as perforated collectors) are a relatively new development in solar collector technology, introduced in the early nineties for ventilation air heating. These collectors are used in several large buildings in Canada, USA and Europe, effecting considerable savings in energy and heating costs. Transpired collectors are a potential replacement for g...

The present work evaluates the performance of solar collector using Al2O3-C2H6O2-H2O nanofluid as a working fluid through both experimental and CFD analysis. Ethylene-glycol water mixture (40:60 v/v) is used as base fluid, where α-Al2O3 nanoparticle of 20 nm average size is dispersed for the preparation of nanofluid of four different volumetric concentration (vol. conc.) of 0.05, 0.075, 0.1 and...

A TRNSYS component (Type 262) has been written to simulate a concentrating PV/Thermal collector. The component is based on a dynamic model of a concentrating PV/Thermal collector, which includes thermal capacitance effects, and detailed equations describing the temperature dependent energy flow between the collector and surroundings. The CHAPS system, a 30x concentration parabolic trough PV/The...

Solar energy is a good option among renewable energy resources due to its easy availability and abundance. The simplest and most efficient way to utilize solar energy is to convert it into thermal energy and this can be done with the help of solar collectors. The thermal performance of such collectors is poor due to less heat transfer from the collector surface to air. In this work, experimenta...

The performance of the Combined Heat and Power Solar (CHAPS) collectors at the Australian National University is described. Results from testing of the collector under steady state conditions at a range of input temperatures are presented. Measured results under typical operating conditions show thermal efficiency around 57% and electrical efficiency around 11%, and therefore a combined efficie...

This study examines modeling and simulation of the transient thermal behavior of a solar collector adsorber tube. The data used for model setup and validation were taken experimentally during the start-up procedure of a solar collector adsorber tube. ANN models are developed based on the nonlinear autoregressive with exogenous input NARX model and are implemented using the MATLAB® tools includi...

Solar desiccant cooling is widely considered as an attractive replacement for conventional vapor compression air conditioning systems because of its environmental friendliness and energy efficiency advantages. The system performance of solar desiccant cooling strongly depends on the input parameters associated with the system components, such as the solar collector, storage tank and backup heat...