Fabrication and investigation of solar water heater with evacuated heat pipe using nano fluid

Abstract

Solar heater is a device which is used for heating the water, for producing the steam for domestic and industrial purposes by utilizing the solar energy. Solar energy is the energy which is coming from sun in the form of solar radiations in infinite amount, when these solar radiations falls on absorbing surface, then they gets converted into the heat, this heat is used for heating the water. This type of thermal collector suffers from heat losses due to radiation and convection. Such losses increase rapidly as the temperature of the working fluid increases. To overcome this losses we use SWH using nanofluid system. This system include heat pipe using nanofluid. Because of that it absorbs maximum heat and also reduces heat losses.In this paper we explained SWH using nanofluid and analysis of parameters using Taguchi Method. The term ‘nanofluid’ refers to a two-phase mixture with its continuous phase being generally a liquid and the dispersed phase constituted of ‘nanoparticles’. In this experiment we considered three parameters such as Diameter of heat pipe, Mass flow rate, Length of glass tube. By using these three independent parameters, with each having three set values in L9 orthogonal array, we find out optimum combination of parameters. In taguchi method we take analysis of variance, regression analysis and validation test. Analysis of variance gives us Mass flow rate has stronger evidence and hence it is more effective parameter.