Improving the performance of a PCM integrated solar air collector by adding porous fins over the bottom side of the absorber: A transient CFD study

Abstract

In this study, it is aimed to improve the utilization time period of a solar air collector by integrating a PCM unit. In this context, a PCM unit was integrated to a single-pass solar air collector. Additionally, porous fins were added into the PCM unit in order to shorten PCM melting time. Thus, six different solar collectors were designed and numerically analyzed by adding a storage unit and fins to the collector. A collector without storage and five PCM added collectors with different number of porous fins were studied. In other words, the effect of integrating PCM container and adding porous fins inside the PCM container on various parameters such as utilization time period of the collector, outlet temperature, thermal efficiency and exergy efficiency were investigated. The ANSYS Fluent program was used in numerical analyses. As a result, integrating the PCM unit to the analyzed air collector caused to extend utilization time period of the collector. Adding porous fins into the PCM unit has resulted in a significant increase in the overall performance of the system. In addition, increasing the number of porous fins accelerated the melting process of paraffin. Increasing the number of porous fins was significantly improved average energy efficiency. Average thermal efficiency of the tested collectors was obtained between 38.66 and 41.73 %. In general, as a result of numerical analysis of six different systems, the utilization time was increased by adding the PCM unit to the solar air collector. Moreover, placing porous fins inside the PCM unit increased the performance of the system by accelerating the melting of the paraffin.