Solar Oven CFD Simulation, ANSYS Fluent Training

Description

Description

Solar energy is a renewable and sustainable source of power that is harnessed from the sun’s radiation. It can be used for various applications, from generating electricity to heating water. A solar oven is a device that harnesses sunlight to generate heat for cooking. It can be a simple DIY project or a manufactured product designed for efficiency and portability. Solar ovens are often used in areas where conventional cooking fuels are scarce or expensive, as well as by enthusiasts of sustainable living.
In this project, concentrated solar rays have been modeled to heat up the cooking pot. The solar rays are reflected off the walls of this parabolic collector and heat up the pot. The collector has 1 meter length and 1.5 meters height and width. The cooking pot consists of 30 cm diameter cylinder.
The geometry is designed in SpaceClaim® and is meshed using ANSYS Meshing®. The mesh is unstructured with 989,310 elements.

Methodology

In this simulation, the energy equation has been activated. The radiation model was activated, and the Discrete Ordinates (DO) model was chosen for modeling heat transfer by radiation. Solar ray tracing was used to model the incident rays from the sun. The collector’s walls’ radiation boundary condition was selected as opaque, and both the diffuse fraction and the absorption coefficient were set to zero, so all incident rays to these walls will be reflected.
The cooking pot gains heat through radiation and loses heat by conduction. Therefore, the density of air was defined to be that of an ideal gas to allow for buoyancy-driven flow to occur.

Results

Contours of temperature and radiation absorption are presented. The contours show that the absorption of heat flux occurs not only on the side of the pot facing the sun but also on the other sides where reflected rays are absorbed. This makes the average temperature of the cooking pot reach approximately 477K.