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S. Bhagavathi Shankar, Dr. A. Manivannan / International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications (IJERA) ISSN: 2248-9622 www.ijera.com Vol. 3, Issue 2, March -April 2013, pp.793-798

Performance Evaluation of Solar Water Heater Using Nanofluid S. Bhagavathi Shankar*, Dr. A. Manivannan** *(Department of Energy Engineering, Regional Centre, Anna University Tirunelveli Region,Tirunelveli-07) ** (Assistant Professor, Department of Energy Engineering, Regional Centre, Anna University Tirunelveli Region, Tirunelveli-07)

ABSTRACT Solar water heater is the most popular means of solar energy utilization because of technological feasibility and economic attraction compared with other kinds of solar energy utilization. The system can supply hot water at 50 o C and 80 oC which can be used for both domestic and industrial purposes. Heat transfer enhancement in solar devices is one of the key issues of energy saving and compact designs. Nanofluids are the new kind of heat transfer fluid containing a very small quantity of nano particles that are uniformly and stably suspended in fluids. Nanofluids are high thermal conductivity than conventional fluids. Numerical model of the solar water heating system has been developed by using water and nanofluid as a base fluid. The objective of this paper is to improve the efficiency of solar water heating system by using nanofluids as a working fluid and improving the efficiency of solar water heater than the water as a working fluid by theoretically. The theoretical calculations were made and the result shows that the 10.88% of an improved efficiency is observed at .025% volume fraction of the nanofluids. Keywords: copper oxide, nanofluid, solar water heater systems, thermosyphon, volume fraction

I. INTRODUCTION Solar Water Heater (SWH) is a typical device that converts the solar energy into thermal energy to heat up a heat transfer fluid such as water, non-freezing liquid or air for domestic usage. Solar water heating is widely used in most of the countries in all over the world. Now a days, the world’s demand of energy has increased, and it the natural, safe and costless process to collect hot water by solar radiations. There are many applications of the hot water heated by the solar radiations. Where the solar hot water is used in the domestic purposes, it also is used in industrial applications, e.g. used for electricity generation.

mixture water with ethylene glycol and engine oil as cooling agent, but it is depend on the type of application use. However, it is found that the solubility of others base fluid such as ethylene glycol is lower than water at certain temperature although the thermal conductivity is low for ethylene glycol. By the background of the solar water heater systems discussed and the thermosyphon solar water is used in the process to transfer fluid between the solar energy collector and hot water store is driven by buoyancy forces. And the flat plate collector is used because of its simple construction for the fabrication of this system. And the Copper oxide nanofluid is mainly used for its cost effectiveness in the solar water heating system.

II. NUMERICAL ANALYSIS OF SOLAR WATER HEATING SYSTEM The procedure of solar water heating system is given and its components are discussed. Performance of the system is done theorectically. And the comparative analysis between both the working fluids are discussed and presented. The arrangement of solar collectors made for its better performance is given. Finally the design calculations of the system are performed for setup which is shown as following

Fig 1: Thermosyphon Solar Water Heater

The term ―Nanofluid’’ is envisioned to describe a solid liquid mixture which consists of nanoparticles and a base liquid, and which is one of the new challenges for thermo-science provided by the nanotechnology. The nanoparticles AL2O3, CuO, TiO2, ZnO and SiO2 are commonly use in the major research. The base fluid normally using water,

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