CFD Analysis of Circular Pipe Flat Plate Solar Collector

Solar energy is available in abundance but least used energy source of available renewable energy
resources. Solar Energy is being used for some household and commercial purposes like producing steam
for commercial usage, heating of water to maintain the indoor temperature of houses etc. Water heating
requires heat, which is produced usually with burning of fuels (Methane, Gasoline) and these fuels are
costly and causes pollution at burning, but if we use solar energy which is available for almost 10-12 hours
in almost every country, we can save a lot. This paper attempts to make the numerical simulation of flat
plate solar collectors. Simulation is an important tool for the design and operation control. Design
engineers use simulation results to design water heating systems, simulation makes it possible to find the
optimal design and operating parameters. In this paper, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools
have been used to simulate solar collectors to better understand heat transfer capacity. Three-dimensional
model of the U-tube collectors and flat absorber plate is obtained using Solid Works. The results obtained
by the use of ANSYS FLUENT software. The purpose of this work is to better understand the relative
computational fluid dynamics flow of the solar collector and the temperature distribution within solar
collector. Outlet air temperature and solar radiation are compared and between them there is a good
consistency. Our project is basically in our study design optimization, we can use our results to improve
the efficiency of flat plate solar collector theory in the future. These results can also be used for design
purposes.