Environmental, economic, and performance assessment of solar air heater with inclined and winglet baffle.

To investigate the solar air heater's (SAH) effectiveness, experiments are conducted using flat plate and artificially roughened plate in terms of inclined and winglet baffles over the collector surface. This proposed system collector plate is made up of inclined and winglet ribs and serves as an artificial roughness generator. Air stream of 0.01, 0.02, and 0.03 kg/s are used in the experiment. To determine the improvement in the proposed work, these experimental results are compared with flat plate SAH. This proposed work offers a greater efficiency, useful energy gain, and lower top heat loss than a conventional SAH. At 0.03 kg/s system efficiency and useful energy gain reach their peak. Experimental day's average efficiency of a SAH with inclined and winglet baffles is 30.8%, 52.7%, and 72.9%, respectively, for the examined cases, and it is 11%, 13.8%, and 22.2% more effective than a flat surface SAH. For the investigated air flow rates, the proposed system gains 36.2%, 24.2%, and 28.9% more energy than flat plate SAH. Substantial reductions in top losses of up to 8.48%, 7.28%, and 7.27% have been reported at the specified flow rates, respectively. Energy metrics and economic study performed show the payback time, production factor, life cycle conversion efficiency, and economic values of the proposed SAH are optimum.