Abstract
Nanofluids are increasingly being deployed in numerous energy applications owing to their impressive thermal enhancement properties. Motivated by these developments in the current study we present finite volume numerical simulations of natural convection in an inclined 3-dimensional prismatic direct absorber solar collector (DASC)containing gold-water nanofluid. Steady-state, incompressible laminar Newtonian viscous flow is assumed. The enclosure has two adiabatic walls, one hot (solar receiving) and one colder wall. ANSYS FLUENT software(version 19.1) is employed. The Tiwari-Das volume fraction nanofluid model is utilized to simulate nanoscale effects and allows a systematic exploration of volume fraction effects. The effects of thermal buoyancy (Rayleighnumber), geometrical aspect ratio and enclosure tilt angle on isotherm and temperature contour distributions are presented with extensive visualizationin three dimensions. Grid-independence tests are included. Validation with published studies from the literature is also conducted. A significant modification in vortex structure and temperature distribution is computed with volume fraction, Rayleigh number, aspect ratio and tilt angle. Heat flux and average Nusselt number results are also included. Gold nano-particles even at relatively low volume fractions are observed to achieve substantial improvement in heat transfer characteristics.
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