Analysis of Flow and Heat Transfer in a Flat Solar Collector with Rectangular and Cylindrical Geometry Using CFD**Chicago citation style Marroquín-De Jesús, Ángel, Juan Manuel Olivares-Ramírez, Omar Jiménez-Sandoval, Marco Antonio Zamora-Antuñano, Armando Encinas-Oropesa. Analysis of Flow and Heat Transfer in a Flat Solar Collector with Rectangular and Cylindrical Geometry Using CFD. Ingeniería Investigación y Tecnología, XIV, 04 (2013): 553–561.ISO 690 citation style Marroquín-De Jesús A., Olivares-Ramírez J.M., Jiménez-Sandoval O.J., Zamora-Antuñano M.A., Encinas-Oropesa A.E. Analysis of Flow and Heat Transfer in a Flat Solar Collector with Rectangular and Cylindrical Geometry Using CFD. Ingeniería Investigación y Tecnología, volume XIV (issue 4), October-December 2013: 553–561.

AbstractThe present investigation describes the construction and experimentation of two solar energy absorbersusing water as working fluid and its simulation in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). For Absorber A with rectangular cross section and Absorber B with circular cross section, water temperature was calculated using solar radiation and ambient temperature measurements showing increases of up to 62.5°C for both absorbers. The maximum thermosiphonic flow measurement in Absorber A was 701/h and 791/h in Absorber B. On this basis, finite element method and CFD were used to analyze the difference between both flows, with 45, 50, 55, 60, 65 and 70 1/h as simulation values. With the simulation results the Reynolds numbers were determined, finding that the maximum flow (70 1/h) gives the largest Reynolds number variation: 25 ≤ Re ≤ 115 for Absorber A and 199 ≤ Re ≤ 235 for Absorber B. With a smaller variation in Absorber B, the flow at all ducts turns out to be more uniform, which results in more ducts transferring heat to the working fluid