Study of Heat Pipes in Solar Collectors Using Nano Fluids

Abstract

This paper describes about the performance of heat pipes in solar collectors. The solar energy is the most readily accessible source of energy. It does not belong to anybody and is therefore free. It is also most important of the non-conventional sources of energy because it is eco-friendly. Solar energy captured by solar collector and an evacuated solar collector is most efficient and convenient collector among various kind of solar collector. Heat pipes plays important role in all electronic devices and also in solar collectors. Because the prime role of heat pipe is to reduce the over heat of the devices or collectors. Heat pipe heat exchanger is a simple device which is used to transfer the heat from one location to another location using an evaporation-condensation cycle. The day to day applications of heat pipe heat exchanger are water heater, heat engines, air conditioning and much more. The working fluid of heat pipe heat exchanger is NANO FLUIDS. NANO fluids are the solid-liquid suspension created by the combination of small NANO particles with base liquid(water).The commonly used NANO fluids are Alumina(Al2O3),Copper oxide(Cu2O),Titanium oxide(TiO2) and Au/water. The recently discovered NANO fluid is Graphene oxide due to its high thermal conductivity. The NANO fluid plays a vital role in many of the thermal applications like heat exchanger, solar power generation and Automobile industries because of its higher efficiency less, friction less heat loss and more advantages.