Thermal Performance of a Modified Solar Water Heater Using Fuzzy Model Analysis

Abstract

A parabolic trough solar collector (PTSC)system has been experimentally fabrication and tested to investigation the enhancement of the thermal performance of PTSC. Three scenarios were used as absorber tube with a water as a working fluid; traditional copper tube, twist tape insert inside the absorber tube and comrgated absorber tube. The experiments tests have been carried out at University of Anbar / Ramadi (32.559'N and 41.9196 'E) during selected days frorn December 2019 to February 2020 . The performance ofPTSC system was evaluated by using three main impofiant indicators: water outlet temperature, useful energy and thermal efficiency under the effect of mass florv rate ranges between (0.02 to 0.04) kg/s with the corresponding of Reynolds number range (2000 to 4000) In a parallel, a fuzzylogic model was proposed to predict the thermal efficiency and Nusselt nurnber of the PTSC depending on the experimental results. The fizzy model consists of five inputs and two outputs parameters. The input parameters include: solar intensity, receiver temperature, water inlet temperahrre, water outlet temperature and mass flow rate. While the output parameters include the thermal efficiency and Nusselt number. The experimental results show that the perforated twisted tape insert and comrgated absorber tube have a thermal performance higher than the conventional collector. In general the perforate twisted tape insert investigation an enhancement thermal efficiency ofPTSC about 4.5% while a maximum enhancement in thermal efficiency was recorded about 5.5 oZ in com,rgated absorber tube as compared rvith traditional absorber tube. On the other side, the results of fuzzy model investigate a good agreement about 8.lolo with experimental results of thermal efficiency. Therefore, the proposed model of fuzzy logic was provide high reliability and accuracy for predicting the thermal efficiency and Nusselt number.