A revisit to recent development in enhancement of thermal and hydraulic performance of solar air heater

Abstract

The solar air heater (SAH) is the solar energy collecting device that is the most common and widely used for drying agricultural goods, room heating, seasoning of timber, and curing industrial items. It is also the cheapest solar energy collection device. To increase the amount of heat that is transferred to the fluid which is moving through the duct of a SAH, one method that is successful is to employ a surface that has been artificially roughened. Research on the utilisation of artificial roughness in SAHs has been going on for the better part of the past four decades. In the current paper, an effort has been made to offer a holistic picture of the many forms of roughness geometry that may be utilised for the purpose of producing artificial roughness in SAHs in order to improve their effectiveness. In this article, the results of various experimental and computational works on SAHs that were roughened using various types of roughness geometry are presented. The influence that different rib parameters have on the processes of heat transmission and fluid movement are also covered in this article. The article presents the detailed reviews on heat transfer and flow friction analysis of a modified SAH system.