Thermal Performance Improvement of Double Pass Solar Air Heater

The performance of the double pass solar air heater has been investigated experimentally and numerically using computational fluid dynamics. In the experimental investigations, three double pass solar air heaters were fabricated using ten tubes of aluminum. Aluminum Glass wool was used to insulate the sides and the bottom base with a thickness of 25 mm. Three configurations types was used for the experiments. The experiments time lasted through all the light of the day. For the numerical investigations, SolidWorks was used to generate the geometry of the model and Ansys Fluent was used for the simulations. The results showed that the temperature and the solar flux start to increase as the time raises form the morning then start to decrease at noon. Constantly the stored energy increases by day and decreasing by night. It was also found that vortices were generated in the collector by the air velocity.