16. CFD Analysis of a Microchannel Heat Exchanger Based 3-D Printed Solar Receiver

Nowadays, the advancement towards the need of employing renewable energy sources to generate electricity has gained several attentions in the desalination methodology. Concentrated solar thermal is one of the thriving net-zero approaches to heat the brine water during desalination technique due to its least cost and eco-friendly methodology. In this work, tapping of concentrated solar energy employs a solar receiver that is modelled based on a microchannel heat exchanger. This study involves a parametric analysis on different operating and geometric metrics of the heat exchanger conducted over the Reynolds number ranging from 50 to 1500. This study employs water to be utilized as working fluid while aluminium alloy is taken as the substrate material. The hydraulic and thermal performance of the microchannel heat exchanger is computed in terms of total thermal resistance, heat transfer coefficient and pumping power. The results indicated that irrespective of any change in the geometric parameters, the rise in Reynolds number alleviates and escalates total thermal resistance and pumping power respectively. Also, the effect of decrease in hydraulic diameter of the microchannel generates significant reduction in both thermal resistance and pumping power. In addition, the decrease in microchannel length contributed to better heat transfer performance.