Design and Performance Analysis of a Solar Air Heater With High Heat Storage

Abstract

The aims of this work is to enhance the efficiency of a simple designed solar air heater for crop drying and space heating. ‘Desert sand’, has been introduced as a heat absorbing media inside the solar heater. The experimental testing has been carried out on four different configurations by operating it on natural and forced convection in the climatic conditions of Moradabad, India. The thermal behavior of the system is evaluated by operating it on auxiliary power by placing a halogen lamp tube (300W) inside the inlet and outlet ducts. Because of using halogen lights the system is feasible to perform in poor ambient conditions. The thermal performance of all new configurations of the modified system was found better over a similarly designed conventional solar air heater.