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Energy and exergy evaluation of new design nabla shaped tubular solar air heater (∇ TSAH): Experimental investigation

Research Authors
Hamdy Hassan a,b,*, Osman Omran Osman b, Mahmoud N. Abdelmoez b, Saleh abo-Elfadl b
Research Date
Research Year
2023
Research Journal
Energy
Research Publisher
Pergamon
Research Vol
Volume 276
Research_Pages
127451
Research Website
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?oi=bibs&cluster=8766549354420675210&btnI=1&hl=en
Research Abstract

Solar air heating (SAH) is a low-cost method for air heating using solar energy. An energy and exergy performance is performed experimentally on new designed tubular SAH having tubular absorber of adjacent tubes forming flat pack. Each tube of the absorber contains three adjacent internal tubes forming nabla shape (∇). The nabla tubular SAH (∇TSAH) performance is studied compared to ordinary tubular SAH (OTSAH) having tubular absorber only for single pass (SP) and double pass (DP) flow conditions and different mass flow rates of air (MFRA). The study is investigated under upper Egypt hot climate conditions and 0.018–0.081 kg/s MFRA. The results demonstrate that ∇TSAH has higher outlet air temperature, energy gain, higher energy, exergy, and thermohydraulic efficiencies, and lower top losses than the OTSAH. The new design boosts the exit air temperature by about 13.5 and 5 °C for SP and DP …