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Thermodynamic analysis on using titanium oxide/oil nanofluid integrated with porous medium in an evacuated tube solar water heater

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Abstract

Solar water heaters are one of the most popular applications of renewable energy. So, many modifications have been performed on them to boost their performance. The novelty of the current experimental work is to simultaneous employment of porous medium inside water reservoir and oil-based nanofluid as circulating fluid. Accordingly, TiO2 nanoparticles with two concentrations of 0.2 and 0.4 mass% were dispersed in engine oil as-based fluid. As results, when concentration of 0.4 mass% TiO2 in engine oil is integrated with porous medium, the temperature is increased by 6.4 °C. This temperature enhancement leads to boost the thermal efficiency more than 41%. Moreover, thermal efficiency increments of 5.4% and 19% are occurred, for the cases of employing porous media and simultaneous application of 0.4 mass% TiO2/oil with porous media, respectively. The exergy efficiency was assessed by means of the modified approach. Accordingly, utilization of only porous medium creates 19.6% improvement in the exergy efficiency of the system. Furthermore, the entropy generation in the system was calculated, too, and the base case showed 14.7% more entropy generation compared with TiO2/oil integrated with porous medium. Lastly, a comparative study has been done to show the superiority of this work in comparison with the others.

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Abbreviations

A :

Area (m2)

C p :

Specific heat (J kg−1 K−1)

Ex:

Exergy (W)

F :

Fluid

G :

Solar irradiation (W m−2)

I :

Current (A)

\(\dot{m}\) :

Flow rate of circulating nanofluid (kg s−1)

P :

Power (W)

\(\dot{{\varvec{Q}}}\) :

Heat emitted to the surrounding (W)

S :

Entropy generation (W K−1)

T :

Temperature (°C)

V :

Voltage (V)

ΔT :

Temperature difference (°C)

amb:

Ambient

bf:

Base fluid

gen:

Generate

el:

Electrical

i:

Input

Lost:

Lost

np:

Nanoparticle

nf:

Nanofluid

o:

Output

pump:

Pump

sky:

Sky

sun:

Sun

th:

Thermal

\(\eta\) :

Energy efficiency (%)

\(\Psi\) :

Exergy efficiency (%)

\(\rho\) :

Density (kg m−3)

\(\phi\) :

Mass concentration (%)

TiO2 :

Titanium oxide

mass%:

Mass concentration

vol%:

Volume concentration

CNT:

Carbon nanotube

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Acknowledgements

The research was financially supported by Jundi-Shapur Research Institute, Dezful, Iran. The grant number was 99-1-100-05.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Jundi-Shapur University of Technology, Dezful, Iran

    Mohammad Firoozzadeh

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Jundi-Shapur University of Technology, Dezful, Iran

    Mojtaba Shafiee

  3. Jundi-Shapur Research Institute, Jundi-Shapur University of Technology, Dezful, Iran

    Mohammad Firoozzadeh & Mojtaba Shafiee

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  1. Mohammad Firoozzadeh
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MF was contributed to investigation, methodology, writing—original draft, visualization and writing—review and editing. MS was contributed to supervision, funding acquisition, project administration and writing—review and editing.

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Correspondence to Mojtaba Shafiee.

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Firoozzadeh, M., Shafiee, M. Thermodynamic analysis on using titanium oxide/oil nanofluid integrated with porous medium in an evacuated tube solar water heater. J Therm Anal Calorim 148, 8309–8322 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10973-023-11961-4

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