Experimental investigation and optimization of impinging jet solar thermal collector by Taguchi method

•Taguchi optimization of control factors is implemented in solar thermal collectors.•Contribution ratio of each control factor has been evaluated.•Performance index is evaluated as a quality index measure of energy delivered.•Effective energy delivery in solar collectors decreases beyond Re of 14,00...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied thermal engineering 2017-04, Vol.116, p.100-109
Main Authors: Chauhan, Ranchan, Singh, Tej, Kumar, Nitin, Patnaik, Amar, Thakur, N.S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aerodynamics
Air jets
Design optimization
Energy efficiency
Fluid dynamics
Fluid flow
Fluid friction
Heat transfer
Optimization
Performance Index
Performance indices
Reynolds number
Solar energy
Solar heating
Solar thermal collector
Studies
Taguchi
Taguchi methods
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Summary:•Taguchi optimization of control factors is implemented in solar thermal collectors.•Contribution ratio of each control factor has been evaluated.•Performance index is evaluated as a quality index measure of energy delivered.•Effective energy delivery in solar collectors decreases beyond Re of 14,000.•Taguchi method is powerful tool for parametric optimization based upon MCDM. In this paper, an experimental investigation has been carried out to study the influence of geometrical variations of impinging air jets on heat transfer and fluid friction in a solar thermal collector. Taguchi based design of experiment approach has been applied to optimize the parameters which is apposite for an optimal design towards efficient energy conversion. In total sixteen experimental runs have been performed on three main control factors viz. jet diameter ratio, streamwise and spanwise pitch ratio each having three levels of operation. The heat transfer and fluid friction behaviour have been studied along with the thermohydraulic performance in terms of performance index which plays simultaneously both these criteria. The results show that the geometric variations significantly affect the performance of impinging jet solar thermal collector. The investigation reveals that the jet diameter ratio contributes the most towards overall performance with contribution ratio of 48.86% followed by spanwise pitch ratio and streamwise pitch ratio with contribution ratio of 41.61% and 9.53% respectively. Finally, an optimal design combination of an impinging jet solar thermal collector has been obtained with an improvement of 37–48.3% at Reynolds number in the range 4000–16,000.
ISSN:1359-4311
1873-5606
DOI:10.1016/j.applthermaleng.2017.01.025