Fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of an enclosure with fin as a top cover of a solar collector

To reduce heat loses in a flat plate solar collector, double glasses cover is employed. Several studies show that the heat loss from the glass cover is still very significant in comparison with other losses. Here, double glasses cover with attached fins is proposed. In the present work, the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics of the enclosure between the double glass cover are investigated numerically. The objective is to examine the effect of the fin to the heat transfer rate of the cover. Two-dimensional governing equations are developed. The governing equations and the boundary conditions are solved using commercial Computational Fluid Dynamics code. The fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics are plotted, and numerical results are compared with empirical correlation. The results show that the presence of the fin strongly affects the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics. The fin can reduce the heat transfer rate up to 22.42% in comparison with double glasses cover without fins.