The production of thermal energy from solar energy by flat collectors finds nowadays many applications due to their innumerable economic and environmental interests. Currently, conservation of energy resources has become a global priority. On the other hand, given the dizzying demand for energy, has led specialists to find new techniques, such as renewable energies (solar, wind and geothermal). The present work is a contribution, by numerical simulation, to the study of heat transfer in flat solar collectors. On the basis of some experimental data, several simulation calculations have been carried out in order to determine the influencing parameters allowing better performance of the sensors and ensuring a good homogeneity of the temperature distributions. Based on the observation that, due to the low thermophysical properties of the air used as heat transfer fluid, solar air collectors rather give poor yields. It has been found very useful to have ‘baffling’ obstacles of various shapes and forms in the solar collector duct. This increases the thermal transfer of a coolant, which clearly improves the thermal efficiency of the solar air collector. This article consists mainly of studying the effects on heat transfer of turbulent forced convection by baffles of zigzag shapes, placed in a rectangular channel, using the finite volume method. The pressure-velocity coupling has been processed by the SIMPLEC algorithm. The results are presented in terms of the average Nusselt number and temperature field for different positions.

In this work, steady flow-field and heat transfer through a copper-water nanofluid around a rotating circular cylinder with a constant nondimensional rotation rate α varying from 0 to 5 was investigated for Reynolds numbers of 5–40. Furthermore, the range of nanoparticle volume fractions considered is 0–5%. The effect of volume fraction of nanoparticles on the fluid flow and heat transfer characteristics are carried out by using a finite-volume method based commercial computational fluid dynamics solver. The variation of the local and the average Nusselt numbers with Reynolds number, volume fractions, and rotation rate are presented for the range of conditions. The average Nusselt number is found to decrease with increasing value of the rotation rate for the fixed value of the Reynolds number and volume fraction of nanoparticles. In addition, rotation can be used as a drag reduction technique.

A passive autocatalytic hydrogen recombiner (PAR) is a self-starting device, without operator action or external power input, installed in nuclear power plants to remove hydrogen from the containment building of a nuclear reactor. A new mechanistic model of PAR has been presented and validated by experimental data and results of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The model allows to quickly and accurately predict gas temperature and composition, catalyst temperature and hydrogen recombination rate. It is assumed in the model that an exothermic recombination reaction of hydrogen and oxygen proceeds at the catalyst surface only, while processes of heat and mass transport occur by assisted natural and forced convection in non-isothermal and laminar gas flow conditions in vertical channels between catalyst plates. The model accounts for heat radiation from a hot catalyst surface and has no adjustable parameters. It can be combined with an equation of chimney draft and become a useful engineering tool for selection and optimisation of catalytic recombiner geometry.

The airflow through a two-dimensional horizontal rectangular cross-section channel in the presence of two baffles has been numerically examined and analyzed in the steady turbulent regime. The baffles were of the zig-zag type or plane one. The calculations are based on the finite volume approach and the average Navier–Stokes equations along with the energy equation, have been solved using the SIMPLE algorithm. The nonuniform structured quadrilateral-type element mesh is used in this study. The fluid flow patterns represented for Reynolds numbers based on the hydraulic diameter of the channel ranging from 5000 to 20 000. Effects of various Reynolds number values on flow fields, dimensionless axial velocity profiles, as well as local and average friction coefficients in the test channel is presented. The obtained results show that the flow structure is characterized by strong deformations and large recirculation regions. In general, the fluid velocity and skin friction loss rise with the increase in the flow rate and hence the Reynolds number.