Thermal Performance of the Flat Plate Solar Air Heaters with Thermal Storage Kumar P. T. Saravana*, Myailsamy K.** *Associate Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College, Coimbatore, India **Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of Road and Transport Technology, Erode, India Online published on 14 October, 2016. Abstract The thermal performance of the flat plate air heater with thermal storages is studied experimentally. An forced convection flat plate solar air heater integrated with different sensible heat storage material has been developed and tested its performance for solar collector under the metrological conditions of Pollachi, India. The system consists of a flat plate solar air heater with heat storage unit, and a centrifugal blower. Experiments have been performed for different thermal storage materials. The inclusion of heat storage material also increases the collector outlet temperature and collector efficiency by 10–15%. The gravel with iron scraps gives higher efficiency than other storage materials. It could be concluded that, forced convection solar drier is more suitable for drying high quality dried product. Top Keywords Thermal storage, Sensible heat, Flat plate Solar Air Heater, Solar Energy, Energy. Top |