Author : Thakar Mihirkumar J and Prajapati Dhaval K

In practice different kinds of solar air heaters are available for domestic heating and industrial air heating purposes,
space heating, process heating and agricultural applications. Advantage of this system is to use of renewable energy
source that is free in cost and an eco-friendly, economical and simple device. There are so many researcher who
focuses to improve the efficiency and to maintain the continuous heat supply of the double pass solar air heater using sensible storage material. The heat transfer and friction characteristics due to the sensible storage material of solar air heaters have been reviewed in this research. A double pass solar air heater was fabricated and integrated with thermal storage system and powdered cherry pits are used as a thermal storage medium. The performance of this heater was studied for different configurations. The solar heater integrated with thermal storage delivered comparatively high temperature. The efficiency of the air heater integrated with thermal storage was also higher than the air heater without thermal storage system. The study concluded that the presence of the thermal storage medium at the absorber plate is the best configuration.

Keywords: Cherry pits powder, Double pass solar air heater, Solar Absorber plates, Sensible heat storage system

Article published in International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, Vol.10, No.1 (Jan/Feb 2020)