Applicablity of using thermal storage materials in solar air heater

Abstract EN

Solar air heater (SAH) is more suitable for residential space heating in winter season and in drying crops.

This work presents thermal performance of flat plate SAH with and without thermal storages.

A forced convection solar collector (FCSC) integrated with different sensible heat storage materials (sand, concrete, pure cement) has been developed and tested to evaluate its performance under meteorological conditions of Baghdad, Iraq.

System consists of three flat plate solar air heaters with different heat storage materials, and the fourth without storage heat material.

All collectors are supplied with centrifugal blower.

The experimental results indicated that the pure cement gives better thermal performance than other storage heat materials (sand, concert), the pure cement gives heat along (240 min) after (6:30 PM), but the duration was (170 min) and (65 min) for concrete and sand respectively.

The air flow rate is more affect on both outlet air temperature storage heat times, where studied the effect of three air velocities (0.8m/s, 1.4m/s and 2.1m/s) on SAH performance with best thermal storage heat material (pure cement), the increase in outlet air velocity leads to decrease in both outlet air temperature and storage time of thermal energy.