Abstract

SIMBANA, I.; QUITIAQUEZ, W.; CABEZAS, P.  and  QUITIAQUEZ, P.. Comparative Study of the Efficiency of Rectangular and Triangular Flat Plate Solar Collectors through Finite Element Method. Revista Técnica energía [online]. 2024, vol.20, n.2, pp.81-89. ISSN 2602-8492.  https://doi.org/10.37116/revistaenergia.v20.n2.2024.593.

Abstract:

This investigation compared the efficiency of a

flat-plate solar collector with triangular and square geometry, by using the finite element method (FEM). The design of the geometries and the utilized parameters for the simulation were obtained from previous publications. SolidWorks was used to model the two collectors, meanwhile, the Fluent module of the ANSYS software was used for the simulation by the FEM. Collectors integrated a pipe of 7 mm internal diameter with a plate thickness of 11 mm; the defined material was aluminum. The experiment was conducted under ambient conditions at a temperature of 20 °C, accompanied by a solar radiation intensity of 1000 W·m-2. The heat transfer surfaces employed were 61 250 mm2 for the triangular collector and 122 500 mm2 for the square collector. The quality of the mesh was excellent, obtaining a skewness of 0.2486, with which efficiencies of 62 and 39 % and maximum temperatures of 27 and 25.5 °C were obtained for the triangular and square collectors, respectively. Due to the geometries performing as fins, the temperatures are higher in the corners and, therefore, achieving higher efficiency is impossible.

Keywords : Solar collector; flat-plate; efficiency; FEM.

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