Abstract
The current paper presents an experimental work that had been implemented to observe the performance of an improved solar air heater and compared it with that of a conventional double-pass flat plate solar air heater. Improvements that have been added include the use of a V-shaped corrugated plate at an angle of 60 degrees, the addition of wood baffles in the lower pass and the use of phase-changing materials PCM as well as air recycling conditions. The heater was designed and tested under the weather conditions prevailing in the Duhok Governorate (latitude 36° 52' 1.52" N and longitude 42° 59' 18.42" E) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The phase-changing material PCM is paraffin wax. The gathered results showed that the improvements that were added to the solar air heater significantly improved the performance at different mass flow values (0.037, 0.057, 0.077 kg/sec). For example, the maximum values of useful heat transfer at mass flow rates (0.037, 0.057, and 0.077kg/s) are 1.68, 1.86, and 2.34 kW, respectively, and the daily efficiency for improving and conventional heater value at mass flow rate 0.037kg/s for 15,16, and 17 of February on 2022 was (84% and 45%), (86% and 46%), and (91% and 60%), respectively.
