Numerical Study on the Flow Characteristics of Flat-Plate Solar Collector with Riser Number

평판형 집열기의 지관수에 따른 유동특성에 대한 수치해석 연구

It is essential to know the flow characteristics at the risers of Flat-plate solar collector for optimum design. For flat-plate solar collector, it is difficult to experimentally study the effect for the number of riser in the collector for the economic problem. So, this study was performed to show the flow characteristics of flat-plate solar collector with the number of riser using commercial code FLUENT 6.0. The base collector size is chosen with $2\;m^2$ as 1m by 2m in this study, the mass flow rate was estimated 0.04 kg/s using the mass flow rate of 0.02 kg/s per collector area for the certificate test. The number of riser is selected 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14. Through the simulation, the conditions with the risers of 10 or 12 is shown as the optimum design conditions for conventional flat-plate solar collector considering lower pressure drop and more uniformly distributed mass flow rate for higher heat transfer rate without considering heat transfer.