THERMAL PERFORMANCE INVESTIGATION OF EVACUATED TUBE HEAT PIPE SOLAR COLLECTOR WITH NANOFLUID

Solar energy, being abundant and widespread in its availability, makes it one of the most attractive sources of energies. Tapping this energy will not only help in bridging the gap between demand and supply of electricity but shall also save money in the long run. A Solar Water Heating System (SWHS) is a device that makes available the thermal energy of the incident solar radiation for use in various applications by heating the water. Solar energy is one of the cleaner forms of renewable energy resources.  The conventional solar collector is a well-established technology with certain limitations. This has various applications such as water heating, space heating and cooling. However, the thermal efficiency of these collectors is limited by the absorption properties of the working fluid, which is very poor for typical conventional solar evacuated tube collector. Recently usage of nanofluid, which is basically liquid- nanoparticles colloidal dispersion as a working fluid has been found to enhance evacuated tube heat pipe solar water heaters thermal efficiency.

The objective of this proposed work is to design and develop the heat pipe evacuated tube solar water heater which uses the circular heat pipes with their working fluid as CuO-H20 nanofluid. The project also aims to test the performance enhancement of nanofluid filled heat pipe ETC solar collector compared with conventional evacuated tube solar collector in forced convection mode. Both experimental results will be compared and interpreted accordingly.