Investigation on heat transfer characteristics of multi-duct Trombe wall based on multi-mode heat exchange in winter

[Display omitted] •A multi-duct Trombe wall is proposed that combines Trombe wall and collector pipes.•The mathematical model of multi-duct Trombe wall has been developed.•Analysis of the thermal performance of Trombe walls with multi-heat exchange modes.•Optimized design of the structure of a multi-duct Trombe wall. For the areas where solar energy resources are available and the demand is high, the low heat transfer efficiency of the traditional Trombe wall needs to be solved, so this study combines the traditional Trombe wall with tubular solar collectors and proposes a form of Trombe wall with multi-pipe and multi-heat transfer modes. Numerical simulation analysis is conducted based on the measured data near the wall surface of residential buildings in Zhengzhou City, China, in December. The thermal performance of different heat transfer modes is evaluated based on the simulation results, and the structural form of the multi-duct Trombe walls is optimized. The results show that the coupled heat transfer mode achieves the highest thermal efficiency. Compared with the traditional interlayer heat transfer mode, the coupled heat transfer mode has a faster start-up speed and more stable performance, with a 27.8 % increase in average daily thermal efficiency and a 36 % increase in heating capacity. Research has found that the 9-duct multi-duct Trombe wall performs better in terms of overall performance. Increasing the number of branch pipes further has limited effect on improving thermal performance. When the diameter of the heat collection branch pipe is 60 mm, the multi-duct Trombe wall achieves the highest average daily thermal efficiency of 70.3 %; adopting a non-uniform pipe distribution mode with the center distance of the middle 5 branch pipes being twice that of the other branch pipes, the Trombe wall achieves the highest average daily thermal efficiency and heating capacity.