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Effect of graphene nanopaint on performance of solar air heater attached with inclined and winglet baffles

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Abstract

Solar air heater is widely used for drying and industrial processing application. Different artificial roughened surfaces and coatings over the absorber plates are used to improve their performance of solar air heater by increasing absorption and heat transfer. In this proposed work, the graphene-based nanopaint is prepared by wet chemical and ball milling method and the prepared graphene nanopaint is characterized using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The prepared graphene-based nanopaint is coated on the absorber plate by conventional coating method. The thermal performance of the solar air heater coated with traditional black paint and graphene nanopaint is evaluated and compared. The day’s maximum energy gain by the graphene-coated solar air heater is 972.84 W, whereas traditional black paint is only 808.02 W. The average energy gain of graphene nanopaint is 655.85 W, which is 12.9% higher than the traditional black paint. The maximum thermal efficiency for solar air heater coated with graphene nanopaint is 81%. Also the average thermal efficiency of graphene-coated solar air heater is 72.5%, which has a 13.24% higher average thermal efficiency when compared to conventional black paint-coated solar air heater. The average top heat loss for solar air heater coated with graphene nanopaint is 8.48% lower than solar air heater with traditional black paint.

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Data availability

The datasets used and analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Engineering College, K.R. Nagar, Kovilpatti, 628 503, Tamil Nadu, India

    Santhosh Kumar Dharmaraj, Harichandran Ramasubbu, Vijayakumar Rajendran & Praveenkumar Ravichandran

Authors
  1. Santhosh Kumar Dharmaraj
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  2. Harichandran Ramasubbu
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  3. Vijayakumar Rajendran
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  4. Praveenkumar Ravichandran
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Contributions

SKD prepared the graphene nanopaint. HR gave direction to prepare graphene nanopaint and involved in manuscript preparation. VR fabricated the solar air heater and contributed to experimentation. PR contributed to experimentation work and analysis.

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Correspondence to Harichandran Ramasubbu.

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Dharmaraj, S.K., Ramasubbu, H., Rajendran, V. et al. Effect of graphene nanopaint on performance of solar air heater attached with inclined and winglet baffles. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30, 87330–87342 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-023-28646-y

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