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This work analytically investigates the thermal and thermohydraulic performances of double-flow double- and single-exposure solar air heaters with corrugated and flat plate absorbers. In the double-exposure solar collector, a reflector is placed below and parallel to the collector and reflects the solar radiation on the lower absorber surface. The performances of the collectors with different parameters, such as mass flow rate and insolation, are analyzed. The results of the single exposure collectors are compared with the experimental results to assess the accuracy of the present mathematical model and found to be reasonably well. The performances of the double-exposure collectors are significantly better than those of the single-exposure collectors. Moreover, the performance of the corrugated absorber solar air collector is superior to that of the flat plate solar air collector. The double-exposure corrugated absorber solar air heater is 10.85 % more efficient than the single-exposure flat plate solar air heater at a mass flow rate of 0.0277 kg/s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the analytical investigation of the double flow flat plate and corrugated absorber solar air heaters having different configurations of flow channels. The energy balance equations are analytically derived and solved by developing a computer program in C++ language in order to analyze the effect of system configurations and operating parameters on energy and exergy performance. The results of different configurations of double flow corrugated absorber solar air heaters have been compared with double flow flat plate absorber solar air heater and it indicates that the corrugated absorber solar air heaters (SA-1, SA-2 and SA-3) have much higher efficiency than the flat plate solar air heater (SA-4). It is found that the maximum enhancement in energy efficiency of SA-1 solar air heater is 7.20% for the mass flow rate of 0.035 kg/s. It is also observed that the exergy efficiency become negative at higher mass flow rate (i.e. m > 0.072 kg/s) for all types of solar air heater. The results also show that increasing the solar intensity leads to achieve higher air temperature rise and efficiencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]