Solar Heater CFD, what really happens

A look at a common solar heater design. According to most websites the flow is largest at the outer tubes and slow in the center. They explain it as the pressure is highest at the intake and lowest at the ouput. This simulation disagrees with that because while the pressure is lowest at the output the highest pressure is opposite of intake because the flow through the intake has a higher velocity which lowers the pressure. So the velocity through the pipe nearest to the output is highest and the velocity near the input is the slowest. Looking at this tells us that this system isn't really designed the best.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• CFD
• Solar
• Heater
• Ansys
• Fluid
• Dynamics
• Computational
• mistake
• power
• energy
• Redesign
• Common

[fater52]

I have two thoughts:

1. I think it would be true if a bottleneck would be put on the end of the output pipe.

2. The air is streaming continuously, not intermittently. His pressure does not decrease in this manner.

[Pyro1509]

1. a "bottleneck" would not fix it, It would make the problem worse by making a larger pressure difference.

2. The arrows you are seeing are just following the streamlines, this is a steady state solution.

[my2cents0]

PLZ run this simulation,with the intake and output in the center of the main tubes.this has been described by the hungarians as the ideal way.this is very interesting, I am working on my second solar heater right now.