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Go to Editorial ManagerThe incorporation of thermal energy storage materials (TESMs) into solar energy systems is a factor that boosts the performance of these systems. In this paper, an experimental study was addressed for enhancing the heat pipe’s thermal performance that works with an Evacuated Solar Tube Collector with Heat Pipe (ETCHP) as a solar water heater system. This is done by adding micro-zinc oxide (ZnO-MP) to the paraffin wax integrated as TESM into the evacuated tube (ET) of the system, where the evaporator section of the heat pipe is completely submerged within the micro-enhanced paraffin wax. Three experimental prototype rigs with one evacuated tube were designed, built, and tested to do the investigation. The most important parameters that have been studied in this study are the thermal resistance and the temperature distribution pattern along the heat pipe. The results show a clear indication of the decrease in the thermal resistance of the heat pipe of the proposed system compared to the system in which pure paraffin wax was incorporated. Also, it was noticed that there is a significant improvement in the temperature distribution along the heat pipe due to the improvement in the conductivity of the micro-enhanced wax compared to the pure wax.
Evaporative cooling is a widely used energy-saving and environmentally friendly cooling technology. Evaporative cooling can be defined as a mass and heat transfer process in which the air is cooled by the evaporation of water and as a result a large amount of heat is transferred from the air to the water and thus the air temperature decreases. Evaporative cooling is mainly used in many cooling technologies used in buildings, factories, agricultural in addition to it is used industrially in cooling towers, evaporative condensers, humidification, and humidity control applications. Evaporative cooling is divided into direct evaporative cooling and indirect evaporative cooling, as well as water evaporative cooling and air evaporative cooling. This paper reviews the most important developments and technologies in evaporative cooling that lead to lower energy consumption and provide suitable cooling comfort.