As a possible alternative to limited fossil fuels, renewable energy such as solar has stood out as an ideal candidate. Commonly, the flat plate collector, is used to harness solar energy, but it has limitations such as inherent thermal resistance, deterioration of selective surface, and inefficient heat dissipation. Recent studies corroborate the merit of porous material in improving the performance of a flat-plate collector. The porous material by virtue of its structural arrangement provides an additional surface area within the limited volume. In addition, the interconnected tortuous path provided to working fluid, facilitates in improving thermal mixing and heat transfer.
In this paper, a numerical study of a flat plate collector integrated with porous copper foam is presented. The influence of the height of the porous foam, Darcy number (Da) and volumetric flow rate (V ) on the performance is resented. The optimum configuration is obtained when S = 1, where highest enhancement in Nusselt number (Nu) and bulk outlet temperature is obtained. Further, the numerical results also show lucrative improvement in Nu of about 5.7 % and 8.8 % with decrease in Da from 10^-2 to 10^-6 and increase in V from 0.25 L/min to 1 L/min.