Preliminary Model for Heat Transport within a Tongue-and-Reservoir Liquid Diode for Passive Solar Heating

摘要

A preliminary model is presented for heat transport within a tongue-and-reservoir liquid diode for passive solar heating. The diode consists of a rectangular vertical slot (tongue) extending from the bottom of a rectangular-shaped reservoir at the reservoir's front face. Water is used as the working fluid in the tongue and reservoir. Solar radiation is incident on the front face of the tongue, which also loses heat to the outside, while radiation and convection transport heat from the back of the reservoir to the building. Convection transports heat when the tongue is irradiated; however, when convection ceases and the temperature of the tongue cools below that of the reservoir (from exposure to the outside temperature), the reservoir stratifies, and the primary heat loss mechanism is conduction through the tongue and its fluid. The result is a passive solar component that may outperform most others. Flow in the tongue is treated as boundary layer flow; the integral forms of the governing equations are combined to form a single equation governing the local boundary layer thickness. The results are shown to depend upon the Grashof, Prandtl, and heat-loss Biot numbers. Results from this model agree well with those from our flow visualization experiments. A model is also proposed for diode heat transport processes during cool-down. In this model, and empirical coefficient accounts for the weak convective mixing that occurs in the reservoir during this phase. Preliminary results indicate the coefficient to be spatially dependent but independent of time and reservoir temperature. More experiments are planned to further validate both of the models described above. (ERA citation 09:032939)