The effect of adding porous fin under the absorber surface on the performance of a solar air collector with energy storage unit

In this study, it is aimed to improve the utilization time period of a solar air collector by integrating a PCM unit. In this context, a PCM unit was integrated to a single-pass solar air collector. Additionally, porous fins were added into the PCM unit in order to shorten PCM melting time. Thus, six different solar collectors were designed and numerically analyzed by adding a storage unit and fins to the collector. ANSYS Fluent program was used in the numerical analyses. As a result, integrating the PCM unit to the analyzed air collector caused to extend utilization time period of the collector. Adding porous fins into the PCM unit has resulted in a significant increase in the performance of the system. In addition, increasing the number of porous fins also accelerated the melting process of paraffin. Increasing the number of porous fins was significantly improved average energy efficiency. In general, as a result of numerical analysis of six different systems, the utilization time was increased by adding the PCM unit to the solar air collector. Moreover, placing porous fins inside the PCM unit increased the performance of the system by accelerating the melting of the paraffin.