Conductive and convective heat transfer augmentation in flat plate solar collector from energy, economic and environmental perspectives - a comprehensive review

The primary objective of the paper is to identify the effective way to enhance the conductive and convective heat transfer of the FPSC. The performance enhancements of different FPSC components such as absorber plate, absorber tube, and heat transfer fluid are reviewed in detail. The influence of absorber plate configurations, material properties, a center-to-center distance of the absorber tube, plate thickness, coatings, and tube geometry have been assessed to increase the conduction heat transfer. Also, the augmentations of convective heat transfer using different nanofluids in FPSC such as Al2O3/water, CuO/water, CNT/water, TiO2/water, SiO2/water, graphene oxide/water, MgO/water, CeO2/water, WO3/water, ZnO/water, and hybrid nanofluids are evaluated in detail. The performance improvements using both conductive and convective (combined) passive technique have been elaborated. The table representation has been used to describe the activities performed in each paper which include FPSC type, passive technique detail, properties of heat transfer fluid, Reynolds number, heat transfer aspects, pumping power, energy, exergy, environmental aspects, and inference. These data will help the researcher to identify existing activities and the potential gap. This review paper also deals with the suggestions for the research work which can be carried out in the direction of heat transfer from solar flat plate collectors.

Automated summary

The paper aims to identify effective methods to enhance the conductive and convective heat transfer of a solar flat plate collector (FPSC). Various component enhancements and the use of different nanofluids for convective heat transfer in FPSC are reviewed in detail. The paper also provides suggestions for future research in this area. The findings and data presented in this review are valuable for researchers in the field of solar energy.