Analysis of energy and exergy for the flat plate solar air collector with longitudinal fins embedded in paraffin wax located in baghdad center

Abstract

Latent heat of the fusion for the Phase changeable materials (PCM) can be utilized as heat energy store, and this energy can be employed in different applications. In present experimental work, effect of using the embedded longitudinal fins within the paraffin wax, on the energy and exergy performance for the solar air collector was investigated under the Baghdad governorate climate. Compared with the collector without paraffin wax, the results indicated that using of paraffin wax as a thermal storage material reduces the losses of energy and exergy of the collector, high levels of heat reduction by using PCM/Fins were about 33 and 40% respectively at the peak heat charging time (12:30 PM), while the decreasing in energy and exergy losses of the collector with PCM only was about 24 and 30% respectively at the same time of charging (12:30 PM). Due to the going of sum heat to store in the paraffin wax at the charging heat time, the energy along with exergy heat gains, while efficiencies were decreased with and without fins, this decreasing in the heat was the most by using PCM/Fins and it was around 30 and 44%, respectively for energy and exergy efficiencies, while it was about 20 and 31% by using PCM only at the same time of testing. The benefit of using embedded longitudinal fins in PCM is to enhance the thermal storage efficiency by about 6% compared with the solar collector that uses PCM only.