Investigations for effect of Al2O3–H2O nanofluid flow rate on the efficiency of direct absorption solar collector

The efficiency of conventional tube‐ in plate type solar collectors is limited due to higher heat losses for surface based solar energy absorption and indirect transfer of heat from hot absorber surface to working fluid having poor heat transfer properties flowing through tubes. In this paper, a prototype direct absorption solar collector having gross area 1.4 m2 working on volumetric absorption principle is developed to investigate the effect of using Al2O3–H2O nanofluid as heat transfer fluid at different flow rates. Experimentation was carried using distilled water and 0.005% volume fractions of 20 nm size Al2O3 nanoparticles at three flow rates of 1.5, 2 and 2.5 lpm. ASHRAE standard 93-86 was followed for calculation of instantaneous efficiency of solar collector. Use of nanofluid improves the optical and thermo physical properties that result into an increase in the efficiency of the collector in all cases of using nanofluids in place of water. Collector efficiency enhancement of 8.1% and 4.2% has been observed for 1.5 and 2 lpm flow rate of nanofluid respectively. Optimum flow rate of 2.5 and 2 lpm towards maximum collector efficiency have also been observed for water and nanofluid respectively.