Energy, exergy, economic and environmental assessment of double pass V-corrugated-perforated finned solar air heater at different air mass ratios

Abstract

An assessment of a flat plate double pass (DP) solar air heater (SAH) having V-corrugated absorber (C_SAH) and corrugated-perforated absorber (CP_SAH) via energy, exergy, economic and environmental approaches (4E) is presented experimentally. The study is performed at four different levels of air mass flow ratios inside the flat plate solar air heater with two levels of absorber plates i.e. C_SAH and CP_SAH. C_SAH and CP_SAH performance is compared with flat SAH (F_SAH) performance. The results show that F_SAH achieves the lowest daily energy efficiency values of 52.5%, 55.86%, 54.77%, and 56.7% while CP_SAH achieves the highest of 67.67%, 69.7%,71.85%, and 70.8% at SP, 1/3 DP, 2/3 DP, and DP conditions, respectively. Moreover, C_SAH and the CP_SAH achieve maximum daily efficiency of 70.58% and 71.85% at 2/3 DP condition. CP_SAH achieves average daily exergy efficiency of 0.78%, 0.89%, 0.97%, and 0.92% with percentage increments of 47%, 55%, 76%, and 54% compared to F_SAH at same previous conditions, respectively. F_SAH at SP condition achieves the maximum energy cost of 0.0427 $/kWh while CP_SAH at 2/3 DP condition achieves the minimum energy cost of 0.0324 $/kWh. The proposed CP_SAH at 2/3 DP condition is the most suitable from the studied cases.