Abstract

This paper presents a performance analysis of a solar air collector with tilted side faces. The northern side wall is tilted at an angle of 38° and other walls are tilted at an angle of 9° relative to the vertical. All these walls are covered with a thin reflective aluminium film. The device may be used as drier, sterilizer or cooker in rural areas. The prototype collector was designed and produced in the Study and Research Center on Renewable Energies of Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar. A theoretical study of heat transfer allows us to formulate the partial differential equations that govern the operation of the collector. These equations were solved numerically using a finite differences method. The agreement between the computed and experimental results for the daily global solar energy and the temperature inside the collector validate the theoretical model. The discrepancy between theory and experiment is less than 2% for the global solar radiation and there is also satisfactory agreement for the absorber temperature.
 

Key words:  Solar collector improvement, global solar radiation, numerical modeling, heating system.