Performance enhancement of solar air heater using herringbone corrugated fins

The present paper deals with the performance enhancement of the solar air collector with the use of herringbone corrugated fins attached below the absorber plate along the fluid flow channel. A theoretical model is developed based on energy balance equation of the new design solar air heater and is solved with the use of MATLAB simulation code. The effect of operating parameters viz. mass flow rate, system parameter viz. fin pitch, fin spacing ratio, flow cross section aspect ratio and metrological parameter viz. solar intensity on the thermal performance of the herringbone corrugated finned solar air heater is investigated. It is observed that the thermal efficiency of the conventional solar air heater improves from 36.2% to 56.6% with fin pitch 2.5 cm at fixed mass flow rate of 0.026 kg/s but at the penalty of increased pressure drop. To account for this the term “effective or thermohydraulic efficiency” is included.