Numerical study of the effect of nanoparticles on thermoeconomic improvement of a solar flat plate collector

The influence of the nanoparticle Al2O3 on the thermo-economic optimization of a solar flat plate collector system at different mass flow rates of the working fluid is studied. In particular, the effects of the nanoparticle on the simultaneous optimization of the total annual cost (TAC) and the collector efficiency are investigated. In order to perform multi-objective optimization with the TAC and efficiency as the two objective functions with seven decision variables, including various collector design parameters, mass flow rate and the nanoparticls volumetric concentration, a Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm (PSO) is used. The sensitivity of the various design parameters on the collector efficiency is determined and investigated. Analysis of results reveal that the Pareto front for the case with a mass flow rate of 0.2 kg/s dominates over the case with a mass flow rate of, and the differences are found to become more pronounced with the addition of the nanoparticle, especially at higher efficiencies. It is also observed that the collector system efficiency increases further with the nanoparticle concentration. It is found that for the optimal performance of the system that simultaneously optimizes TAC and efficiency, all the collector design parameters, except for the number of tubes, can be selected at lower magnitudes when the nanoparticle additive is introduced into the working fluid. Overall, parameter optimization with the use of nanoparticle results in a decreases in the TAC and increase in the efficiency of the flat plate collector.