Abstract

LOPEZ NUNEZ, Oscar Alejandro; LARA CHAVEZ, Fernando; CARDENAS ROBLES, Arilí  and  GONZALEZ ANGELES, Álvaro. Numerical study of a solar collector using water and titanium dioxide water-based nanofluid as working fluids by means of computational fluid dynamics. Rev. cienc. tecnol. [online]. 2023, vol.6, n.3, e260.  Epub June 25, 2024. ISSN 2594-1925.  https://doi.org/10.37636/recit.v6n3e260.

A thermo-hydraulic performance and entropy generation comparison of an evacuated tube solar collector using water and titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ) water-based nanofluid as working fluids is carried out by means of Computational Fluid Dynamics. It is considered a complete 3D geometry under meteorological conditions of the city of Mexicali, Mexico under an operation time of 9 hours. It was found that, throughout the operation time, the evacuated tube solar collector had a better performance in terms of outlet temperature and velocity inside the solar collector using the nanofluid than using only water as working fluid. The phenomena of viscous effects, heat transfer and heat loss in a global and local form are considered in the formulation of the entropy generation. The local entropy generation formulation also allows to illustrate the exact location of the irreversibilities. It was found that, using TiO 2 water-based nanofluid as working fluid leads to a reduction of the entropy generation in all the evacuated tube solar collector. Finally, this type of analysis by obtaining the global and local entropy generation can be helpful to improve their performance through the entropy minimization.

Keywords : Solar Collector; Nanofluid; Computational Fluid Dynamics; Entropy Generation.