Thermal Performance of an Evacuated-Tube Solar Collector Using Nanofluids and an Electrical Curtain Controlled by an Artificial Intelligence Technique

Abstract

This paper studies the improvement of an evacuated tube solar collectors(ETSCs) performance in two way. The first is by adding a finned electronic curtain in front of the solar collector. While the second is by using a nanofluid instead of pure water. The purpose of the curtain is to increase the amount of solar radiation reflected toward the collector. The curtain is distinguished by its self-ability to track the sun's rays automatically. The electronic curtain is also closed to shade the tubes depending on the movement of the electronic curtain's fins and the nanofluid's temperatures. MATLAB algorithm has been used to design the Simulink model and control the system using Fuzzy Logic Control (FLC) and Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The results showed that the system performance improved using TiO2(50nm)+PW) as a working fluid without the curtain are (3.906%,5.34%, and7.407%), while the rate of improvement in the case of distilled water only was 2.34%and3.81%. Finally, by adding the finned electronic curtain to the system and use of TiO2(50nm)+PW) as a working fluid, the efficiency increased by 7.03%,9.16%, and 11.89%. The results showed that the performance of evacuated tubes solar collectors increased by using a nanofluid and the finned electronic curtain.