Abstract – In Solar Air Heater, collector plate is the important component which is mainly responsible for heat transfer through convection. Attached ribs to the collector plate will also improve the thermal efficiency of the solar air heater. It is also proved with an experiment that the rate of heat transfer can be also increased by using variety of ribs. Perforated ribs can give better heat transfer rate as compared with flat collector plate. But the limitation of solar energy i.e. fluctuation in intensity and availability in days only narrows the use of solar air heater. A better solution of use of solar panel to charge battery and use it further in night for heating of collector plate could be done. This arrangement will give hot air in night also. Performance of solar air heater is same as we got in day condition if we maintain required collector plate temperature. In this paper, the phenomenon of air heating is studied and well described by computational fluid dynamic method (CFD). For this purpose the ideal solar air heated chamber is modeled in CAD software like CATIA V5R19 and then further imported into CFD tool like ANSYS Fluent 14.5. The inlet and outlet boundary conditions are given in such a way that, it will simulate actual physical conditions. The rate of heat exchange, Temperature contours, Pressure and velocity counters are observed well to generate proper conclusion.

Keywords– Solar Air Heater, Perforated Ribs, Collector Plate, CATIA V5R19, CFD Tool

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