Development of Feed-Forward Back-Propagation Neural Model to Predict the Energy and Exergy Analysis of Solar Air Heater

In the present work, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model has been developed to predict the energy and exergy efficiency of a roughened solar air heater (SAH).  Total fifty data sets of samples, obtained by conducting experiments on SAHs with three different specification of wire-rib roughness on the absorber plates, have been used in this work. These experimental data and calculated values of thermal efficiency and exergy efficiency have been used to develop an ANN model. Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) and Scaled Conjugate Gradient (SCG) learning algorithm were used to train the proposed ANN model. Six numbers of neurons were found with LM learning algorithm in the hidden layer as the optimal value on the basis of statistical error analysis. In the input layer, the time of experiments, mass flow rate, ambient temperature, mean temperature of air, absorber plate temperature and solar radiation intensity have been taken as input parameters; and energy efficiency and exergy efficiency have been taken as output parameters in the output layer. The 6-6-2 neural model has been obtained as the optimal model for prediction. Performance predictions using ANN were compared with the experimental data and a close agreement was observed. Statistical error analysis was used to evaluate the results. Citation:  Ghritlahre, H. K. (2018). Development of feed-forward back-propagation neural model to predict the energy and exergy analysis of solar air heater. Trends in Renewable Energy, 4, 213-235. DOI: 10.17737/tre.2018.4.2.0078