Abstract:
Intensive marine shrimp fanning has led to serious strain on the coastal aquatic environine~ital problems due to untreated wastewater effluent. Therefore, most shrimp farming must use aerator or air li Et pump to increase the level of oxygen in the shrimp culture tank. Howe-\.rer, gencral aerator consumes large amount of electricity to pump air into the water. This operating cost (electricity cost) can be reduced if the aerator used renewable energy such as solar energy. Thereforr, solar thermal pump wit11 12-pentane was constr~~cted in a previous research. Thc main problem from previous design was the process could operate only one cycle per day. So, this research aims to develop a workable solar aerator by using n-pentane as working fluid. The two goals of this thesis are solving heat transfer problems and increasing the process performance. A new design of laboratory-scale solar aerator prototype was installed to investigate each unit in detail. Thermostat and heater were used to emulate the temperature profile of heating by flat-plate solar collector. Water spray-cooling system was a new component that used to cool hot pentane vapor during cooling period. Double-pipe heat exchanger was a key component used to solve the heat transfer problem in process. Thermosyphon system was designed to actuate hot water back to heating step again. A detail description of the solar aerator and the process during each cycle can be explained with the Pressure & Specific Volume diagram of pentane. Lab-scale solar aerator prototype could operate 3 cycles per run. The process continued until cycle no.4, at which the liquid pentane in the pentane tank was not enough for the heating process. The amplitude of pressure and the performance of aerating gradually declined every cycle. This was the effect of the loss of pentane during each cycle. Moreover, the decreasing pressure resulted in differences of air flow rate, air flow pattern, and cycle time in each cycle. The overall process efficiency was only 0.00176 percent, which must be improved in future. Simple design procedure was developed to calculate and predict the size of vessels to be used in process. Accurate design procedure is another improvement point.