In this paper, we present a two-dimensional numerical analysis of the conjugate natural convection and radiation heat transfer in a double-space enclosure with two semitransparent walls. Two kinds of boundary conditions are considered, the first being the isothermal process of the opaque wall, and the other the incidence of a constant radiation flux in the left semitransparent wall. The renormalization group k–ε model is adopted to simulate the turbulent flow in the enclosure. To compute the radiation heat transfer in a semitransparent medium, the discrete ordinates model is used. We compare the behaviors of enclosures with single and double semitransparent walls and determine the difference in the results obtained for semitransparent and opaque partitions. The results indicate that a semitransparent partition facilitates a reduction in the heat loss or obtains a higher temperature distribution. The transmittance of a semitransparent wall has a great effect on the thermal and flow characteristics in an enclosure. The change of wall temperature is found to be significant when the thermal conductivity values range from 0.05 to 0.5 W/(m·K), and to be small when ranging from 0.5 to 10 W/(m·K). These conclusions are helpful for green design and energy saving in solar buildings.

An important trend of Building Integrated Solar Thermal (BIST) system is to improve the aesthetic aspect of the solar collector to meet the requirement of architectural style and energy collection. Painting on the glass cover in an appropriate method is a simple and practical way. In this study, a halftone coating was used to print a red brick wall pattern on the glass cover. A series of comparative experiments were carried out to test the effect of the coating on the thermal behavior of the solar collector. In heat collection processes, compared with the solar collector with blank cover plate, the one with coated cover plate has lower absorber plate temperature and higher cover plate temperature. The lower the solar irradiance, the smaller the effect of color coating on the solar collector. Compared with the uncoated surface, the coated surface is more sensitive to solar irradiation. In the same heat collection process, compared with the solar collector coated on the outer surface of the cover plate, the one coated on the inner surface has 0.8 °C higher heat absorber plate temperature and 5% lower top heat loss.

The recovery of low-temperature steam is of great significance to the effective utilization of energy. Direct contact condensation (DCC) technology is an effective heat recovery method with a low initial investment. An evaluation of the direct contact condensation heat transfer technology of water droplets and low-temperature saturated steam (at an absolute pressure of 7.3–19.9 kPa) was performed using both experimental and computational approaches. In the experiment, an experimental device based on the weighing method was set up, and the direct contact heat transfer process between droplets with a normalized diameter of less than 21.7 and saturated pure steam at 40–60 °C was experimentally investigated. The transient condensation efficiency and heat transfer coefficient were calculated by the real-time mass variation. The rapid condensation stage was classified to discuss the effects of initial droplet diameter, pressure, temperature, and mass flow rate on the heat transfer process. A two-dimensional model was developed using computational fluid dynamics techniques and verified by experimental results. The results indicated that when the normalized diameter of the droplet is less than two, 1.6 is the optimal value for DCC. For droplets with a normalized diameter greater than two, the optimal droplet temperature and mass flow rate are 15 °C and 10 g/s, respectively.

The transient heat transfer behaviour of direct contact condensation of steam in spray cooling water in a packed column was investigated experimentally and theoretically in this work for the first time. A new analysis method of the state equation was applied to analyze the molar quantity variation of steam in the course of the experiment. The results showed that increasing the cooling water flow rate properly could significantly accelerate the steam condensation rate and this was more obvious at the beginning of the operation. The higher the flow rate of the cooling water was, the shorter a time it took for the steam to be completely condensed. When the cooling water flow rate was 840 L/h, the steam was mainly condensed within 13 s, which indicated that it would rapidly handle steam by regulating cooling water flow rate. However, the effect of changing cooling water temperature on steam condensation rate is slight with the cooling water temperature inceasing from 23 °C to 42 °C. The volumetric heat transfer coefficient in this experiment is in the range of 1.47 kW · m⁻³ · K⁻¹ to 10.93 kW · m⁻³ · K⁻¹ with the cooling water flow rate inceasing from 120 L/h to 840 L/h, and the maximum uncertainty in the results is 2.2 %.