Experimental and numerical analysis of a modified hot water radiator with improved performance

The use of high efficiency and low consumption energy heating appliances has always been a concern for engineers. Low pressure hot water radiators are the most common type of heating systems used in many countries. An alternative procedure of enhancing output heat of radiators may be achieved by using fins. In this paper, we investigate experimentally and numerically heat transfer in a particular kind of radiators in order to improve their output heat. Also a modified radiator with new design of fins is studied. The geometry of these radiators consist of five fins that increase the convection heat transfer rate in the modified radiator because of high area. The experiments were performed on original hot water radiator with five blades and since the output heat is by convection and radiation, surface temperature of the radiator is measured for different input water temperature and flow rates. The experimental method is like that is indicated in standard BS EN 442. In addition, this article presents numerical simulation of the radiator and in order to validation, the CFD results is compared to the experimental results. The comparison of the results represent a small percentage error between them. Simulation results showed that the output heat from modified radiator increased about 45% compared to original model. At the end, according to the installation location of the radiator on the wall, temperature distribution in a room is obtained by three dimensional lattice Boltzmann method.