A turbulence inducer side wall treatment for a solar collector for performance improvement

It is generally found that solar collector has lower conversion efficiencies due to low density of the carrying air medium. This issue has been an important focus for many researchers who are working hard to improve the efficacy of conversion by various design interventions for the absorber itself. However, there is vast scope for improving the efficiency by means of creating turbulence of the through flow by uniquely designing flow turbulators along the side wall of the duct itself of various designs discussed in this paper. These Turbulence generators are able to brake the laminar sub-layer at the wall. This will result in a higher momentum exchange among the heated air particles. In this paper, an improved turbulence intensity is created so as to enhance the convective heat transfer capability of the medium. Several parametric configurations of the turbulent generators of different shapes are studied and presented in this paper, corresponding to various geometry and under different mass flow rate considerations so as to arrive at an optimum design of the Turbulators.