Economic analysis of artificially roughened solar air heater with v-shaped ribs

Abstract

Due to the minimal transfer of heat from absorber plate to moving air in the duct, solar air heaters have low performance. One of the procedures to augment the heat transfer by substantial amount is by utilizing artificial roughness, by which the performance can be improved considerably. In this study, an economic investigation of solar air heater embedded with artificial roughness is accomplished numerically employing v-shaped roughness, with the objective of optimising life cycle solar savings. The non-dimensional parameters of roughness, namely, angle of attack (α), roughness pitch (p/e) and roughness height (e/D_h) are examined by varying temperature rise over the solar air heater (∆T) and solar radiations (I) for different economic parameters values i.e., cost of collector, cost of roughness elements, and cost of conventional fuel.