2Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Babylon, 51002, Iraq
3Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering in Wadi Alddwasir, Prince Sattam Bin Abdulaziz University, 16273, Saudi Arabia; Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Khartoum, 11115, Sudan
4Faculty of Technology, Djilali Liabes University, Sidi Bel Abbes, 22000, Algeria
Abstract
The current study used single and two-phase modeling to numerically explore three-dimen-sional the turbulent forced convection of a hybrid nanofluid passing through a non-uniformly heated parabolic trough solar collector (PTC) for increasing heat transfer. The typical heat flux profile on the receiver’s absorber outer wall was addressed by a finite volume method (FVM) and the MCRT method. The results demonstrated that the single and two-phase models pro-duced almost similar hydrodynamic results but dissimilar thermal ones. It was found that the results of mixture model matched the experimental ones. The results also illustrated that the hybrid nanofluid gives the highest thermal performance for a mixture composed of 1.5% copper + 0.5% alumina dispersed in the water.
