Numerical investigation on the thermal performance of a flat plate solar collector using ZnO & CuO water nanofluids under Egyptian weathering conditions

Abstract

Stationary flat plate solar collectors (FPSC) absorber plate and outlet water-nanofluid temperatures are investigated under steady state and Egyptian weather conditions. A 3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model, is developed to predict the outlet and absorber plate temperatures at 1-h interval sampling rate through the day and its effect on thermal performance of solar collectors. Simulation model is verified and validated by comparing the results to other previous research. In the research, the working fluids investigated are: water (H2O), zinc oxide (ZnO) nanofluid, and copper oxide (CuO) nanofluid water based with three volume concentration fraction (VF) of 0.05, 0.10 and 0.15% nanoparticles varied for various mass flow rates of 0.0125 and 0.025 kg s−1. The investigation revealed that the best achievement is obtained by using H2O–CuO nanofluid with average efficiency about 81.64% at mass flow rate of 0.0125 kg s−1 and VF of 0.15%. Using H2O–ZnO nanofluid resulted in an average efficiency of about 77.64% at mass flow rate of 0.0125 kg s−1 and VF of 0.15%, which is compared to the best achievement for water fluid of 60.21%. The results present the significant enhancement of the average thermal performance efficiency due to the usage of nanofluids.