article · Case Studies in Thermal Engineering
Solar air heaters provide sustainable energy for applications such as space heating, desalination, and crop drying, but improving their heat transfer efficiency often introduces pressure drops that demand extra pumping power. This research investigates the use of novel hybrid turbulator tape inserts inside a uniformly heated circular tube to enhance thermohydraulic performance. Using air across a turbulent flow regime with Reynolds numbers ranging from 10,104 to 73,788, the design evaluates the effects of varying pitch, length, and width ratios. The hybrid tapes achieved an average increase of 91 percent in the Nusselt number and a 39 percent increase in friction factor compared to a plain tube. Because the thermal performance factor exceeded one across all tested combinations, the findings confirm that these inserts provide an effective way to improve solar air heater operation.
Solar air heaters are widely used for domestic heating and agricultural processing, yet standard designs often lose efficiency through poor heat transfer. Demonstrating that novel hybrid turbulators can significantly boost heat capture without causing excessive resistance helps optimise solar thermal collectors, potentially reducing energy costs for drying, desalination, and space heating systems.
This applied research could benefit manufacturers of solar thermal equipment, particularly companies producing solar air heaters for agricultural crop drying, water desalination, and space heating. By testing physical tube geometries across varying operational parameters, the work is at an applied and tested stage, offering design correlations that equipment engineers can directly apply to improve collector efficiencies.
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Renewable energy from the sun has been a rapidly expanding field in recent years, because to its many advantages as a sustainable, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly power source. Energy drives economic growth and industrialization today. Air heating is a prominent solar energy utilization for space and process heating including washing, desalination, crop drying, and others. To improve energy efficiency, this study examined several designs of novel hybrid tape within an affordable solar-powered air heater. Solar air heaters can improve their heating efficiency by adding additional novel swirl generator. Many research have been done in this subject, however novel geometries are being proposed to better the heat transfer enhancement (HTE)-blowing power penalty tradeoff. Hybrid turbulator tapes are new, and there is no parametric investigation on their advantages. To cover this gap in this research, utilized air as the working fluid to investigate the pressure drop and heat transfer characteristics inside a uniformly heated circular tube with hybrid turbulator tape inserts. The aim was to cover the turbulent flow regime by varying the Reynolds number from 10,104 to 73,788. The thermohydraulic performance with pitch, length, and width ratios is investigated in this work. In comparison to a plain tube, it is observed an average increase of 91% and 39% in the Nusselt number and friction factor, respectively. This indicates a significant improvement in the tube's performance. It is also found that the important thermal performance factor exceeded one for all tape combinations. Novel correlations have also developed. With such encouraging results, using the tested turbulator in a solar air heater for improved performance is feasible.
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DOI: 10.1016/j.csite.2024.104132
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